The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the entrance exam required of prospective applicants by the majority of MBA programs throughout the world, is now more popular among international applicants than it is among U.S. students, according to a recent report in the Financial Times.
Several countries have seen strong growth in terms of GMAT registration volume, including China, Germany, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to the Graduate Management Admissions Council, which owns and administers the GMAT. “What we are seeing is incredible,” GMAC President Dave Wilson told the FT.
But Wilson also acknowledged that test-taking volume has dropped in some other markets. In India, test-taking volume has fallen by 28 percent, and in South Korea, by 30 percent. Wilson attributes this drop off to currency fluctuations that have hit these countries particularly hard, leading students to consider options more affordable than traditional two-year U.S. MBA programs. Or they are dissuaded by the cost of business school from going at all, he added.
Still, the growth of the test’s popularity in other countries was strong enough that for the first time ever, non-U.S. test takers accounted for a majority – 51 percent – of the total test-taking population for the period between January 1 and June 30, 2009.
Overall, the number of GMAT test-takers continues to climb steadily. Between June 2008 and June 2009, the total number of test-takers was 265,613, representing a 7 percent increase over the year before. According to Wilson, one of the biggest areas of growth has been among younger students. “The dramatic growth is in 21- to 22-year old text-takers,” Wilson told the FT.
