Online MBA Forum

If you are really interested in the GMAT results analysis, and the follow through from business schools, the best place you can find information is on the GMAC websites. They have a range of publications online, including Graduate Management News and Selections, and they have a virtual library of research reports, candidate profiles and interesting articles and publications.

They also offer help to people who are preparing to sit the GMAT and to enter an MBA program. Their website, www.mba.com, is very useful if you are in the early stages of selecting your business school and MBA program, and will help you to go through effective selection procedures.

According to GMAC, GMAT is designed as a predictor of prospective students' academic performance on MBAs and other graduate business studies programs. It is also designed on a comparative basis, so that schools can measure the relative abilities of prospective students, based on it's objectivity and consistancy.

In order to make sure that schools can verify this, GMAC runs a validity Study Service, allowing schools to gauge the value of the GMAT results against their GMAT scores. This continued monitoring of the value and relevance of GMAT makes sure that the business schools will continue to insist that prospective students use GMAT as a way in to their chosen MBA programs.

I started to get interested in the idea of GMAT, and how it came about. Apparently in 1953 some 9 business schools decided to develop a standardized test to support their selection process for suitable applicants to their MBA programs. This association grew into the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers GMAT. Apparently in the first year they ran GMAT, the tests were taken some 2000 times. This year the figure will be more than 200,000 tests.

There are some 1,500 schools that accept the GMAT results as a part of their selectin criteria, onto some 1,800 programs. Obviously this means that GMAT is used by schools in many countries, and for many different programs. In fact GMAC have several products that can be of use if you are looking to study an MBA, including a school search database and career development programs.