A recent survey of registrants to the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s (GMAC) mba.com website revealed that business school websites are more influential than published school rankings in prospective applicants’ decisions about where to enroll. Because the mba.com website is a main access point for the GMAT exam, its registrants provide valuable indicators of overall demand for graduate business and management education.
The 2009 GMAC mba.com Registrants Follow-Up Survey found that 97 percent of registrants had visited the websites of the schools to which they intended to apply in order to obtain information about the school’s offerings, and 73 percent considered the school website to have been extremely or very influential in their decision of where to attend. Published business school rankings were named as a secondary source of information, followed by traditional advertising (online, direct mail, print, TV and radio).
Whether they sought the information on school websites or through published rankings, survey respondents were looking first and foremost at a school’s quality and reputation. Other important criteria as reported by survey respondents were, in order, career aspects, financial aspects, program specifics, curriculum aspects and student class profile.
The survey results also shed some light on the average timeline and scope of the application process. One finding was that women register on the mba.com website sooner after completing their first degree than men, an average of 32 months after as compared to 46 months after for men. On average, survey respondents applied to three graduate business schools and four programs. More than half of survey respondents enrolled in a business school program 25 months after registering on mba.com.
To view the survey results in their entirety, click here.
