MBA Admissions Blog by ApexWriters

According to topmba.com applicant survey and GMAC Alumni Perspectives Survey 2010 about 40% of its test takers are now women.  The actual number of takers has crossed 100,000 for the first time ever. David A. Wilson President and Chief Executive Officer of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) says. With about 36% of the applicants being from India, it is interesting to note that more and more Indian women are now exploring an MBA as an career propelling opportunity. Business schools, already keen on increasing the number of female students in their class, offer special incentives like loans/scholarships and flexible schedules exclusively for women. You may just need to check with individual schools and find the best fit.

Zoya Zaitseva, Manager of the QS Tour, says: “In 2009, though 41% of applicants to the QS World MBA Tour were women, for the first time ever, there are some countries where the proportion of women was over 50% and we’re looking into why that might be.”

More details are available at TopMBA.Com

An interesting read for women aspirants: Seven Worries That Get in the Way of B-School

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The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) is giving hundreds of applicants an opportunity to take the GMAT for free!

This program will enable business schools to provide free GMAT registration to applicants. Prospective applicants, whose financial status prevents them from spending $250 for the test, can be offered a free access to the standardized entrance exam. Fee waivers are not directly provided to the applicants but the schools. GMAC will offer business schools up to 10 fee waivers in a year. Schools can use them at their discretion to help economically disadvantaged test takers.

You can find more details about the program at GMAT’s official site

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NYU-Stern will begin accepting Graduate Record Exam (GRE) test scores from candidates applying to its full-time and Langone part-time MBA programs for fall 2010 admissions. Applicants will have an option of submitting either a GMAT or GRE score.

According to Anika Davis Pratt, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions, this move ensures that they will receive more and more high quality applicants from all professional backgrounds. She says, “Now applicants weighing post-graduate program options won’t need to study for and take an additional exam, should they choose business school as their next step,”

Please find more details at NYU’s website

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Business schools are now contemplating accepting GRE as an alternative to GMAT for screening business school applications. The news becomes more interesting when the schools in question are the top schools like Harvard and Wharton.

Harvard (Harvard MBA Essay Questions 2009) is one of the few schools which has already started accepting GRE test scores to evaluate applications to MBA and 2+2 program. According to Business Week, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton (Wharton MBA Essay Questions 2009) plans to allow allow applicants to submit GRE scores for MBA admission in Fall 2010. Darden School of Business (Darden MBA Essay Questions 2009), Queen’s School of Business (Queen’s MBA Essay Questions 2009) and Tulane’s Freeman School of Business have also joined the club by accepting GRE on a case by case basis. Stanford GSB (Stanford MBA Essay Questions 2009) and MIT’s Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan MBA Essay Questions 2009) also accept GRE scores in lieu of GMAT.

Schools are looking to attract more dual degree students, college freshers and international applicants ( from countries with no GMAT access) through this move.  Though GMAT still remains the  preferred mode of evaluating applicants’ reasoning, math and language skills; schools are open to accept GRE .

To aid the evaluation, ETS has developed a tool that will measure applicant’s verbal and quantitative scores in GRE and predict the score they might receive on the GMAT. Here is a copy of ETS’  ‘GRE comparison tool and table‘.

It will be interesting to watch if, with time, GRE will be accepted by more schools and if GRE can evaluate applicants’ ability to survive the rigors of an MBA program.

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