Majority of MBA Applicants Still Opt for GMAT Even as GRE Is Accepted by Some Business Schools, Survey Finds

Survey results released last week by Kaplan Test Prep reveal that most prospective business school applicants are still opting to take the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) for entrance into business school even as more MBA programs are beginning to accept Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores as an alternative.

Asked which of the two exams they would most likely take if their top choice schools would accept either one, 55 percent of survey respondents said they would take the GMAT, compared to 12 percent who would take the GRE, Kaplan reports. Twelve percent said they would most likely take both.

The majority of prospective applicants report they would take the GMAT over the GRE even though they consider the GMAT to be the harder of the two exams, Kaplan reports. Of the 300 aspiring MBAs polled in January and February 2010, 47 percent considered the GMAT to be more difficult than the GRE, with only 10 percent saying they think the GRE is more difficult, Kaplan reported.

These findings come as Educational Testing Services (ETS), which owns the GRE, is taking steps to make its exam an attractive option for business school admissions, including major test changes that would make the exam more difficult, according to Kaplan.

“The GRE test maker has made headway in gaining acceptance with many competitive MBA programs, and the announced test changes are most likely designed in part to make it more attractive to business schools,” Liza Weale, Kaplan Test Prep director of graduate programs, said in a statement.

Key changes planned for the GRE include multiple answer questions in each the verbal and math sections of the test, in which test takers must select all answers that correctly apply rather than just one. The verbal section also will be changed to include sentence equivalence questions that call on test takers to select two answer choices out of six that would correctly complete a given sentence and would create two similar sentences when used separately. The math section will also be changed to include questions that require test takers to enter the correct numeric answer to a math problem, with no choices given.

The new GRE, which will be administered beginning August 1, 2011, will also be a Multi-Stage Test (MST). This means that while it will still use computer-adaptive technology, test takers will be able to skip around within individual sections.

Despite these planned changes and the decision by some schools to accept GRE scores as an alternative to GMAT scores, test prep giant Kaplan is still recommending that prospective business school applicants take the GMAT.

“According to a recent Kaplan survey, the majority of top business schools are still GMAT-only and report that they are not currently planning to accept the GRE,” Kaplan’s Weale stated. “So for now, we’re recommending that students applying to business school take the GMAT, and students applying for other graduate programs take the GRE,” she continued. “Aspiring MBAs who only take the GRE may be limited their options,” Weale concluded.