It would be a safe bet that in the last week, someone in the industry has called you, forwarded last week’s Wall Street Journal article, or shown up in your office to personally deliver the news about Harvard’s and Wharton’s historic decision to deny media outlets direct access to their students and alumni. And to some of you, mention of the Council’s name in the article may have come as a surprise.

How is GMAC® involved and why? Back in 1998, then, as now, rankings were a thorny nuisance for many deans. The resources needed to respond to the surveys kept increasing and the seemingly arbitrary ways chosen to present data required multiple databases. Several deans asked GMAC® to establish—with input from schools—standard definitions and reporting criteria for admissions and enrollment data. The concept was simple—to ensure that the data reported are comparable and consistently of high quality.

From that modest beginning, the MBA Reporting Criteria were born. In addition, a virtual warehouse was created to store the data.

Since January 2004, Harvard, Pepperdine, Rice, San Francisco State, Tulane, and California State University—Long Beach, have adopted the GMAC® MBA Reporting Criteria, bringing the total number of adopting schools to 151.

(Click here to find out more about the MBA Reporting Criteria and how to join on as an adopting school.)

Enter MBA Pathfinder

MBA Pathfinder® school search database is an online data reporting tool and search engine that both enables schools to input their data and allows prospective students to search for and compare MBA programs by a number of key characteristics.

There are currently 686 MBA programs representing 273 business schools profiled in MBA Pathfinder. If you're not sure your programs are represented, use the Simple Search feature to find your school name.

If your school is not in MBA Pathfinder, it should be. With many schools departing from published rankings, GMAC® anticipates increasing reliance on the MBA Pathfinder® search tool by prospective students looking for their "right fit" school. Plus, your competition may already be in MBA Pathfinder®—shouldn’t you be?

(Click here to find out more about participating in MBA Pathfinder®.)

Auditing Data in MBA Pathfinder

To ensure consistency of reporting, two years ago GMAC® retained KPMG as its audit firm and launched a program to audit MBA Pathfinder® data through voluntary mock audits and random audits. Mock audits are a means of reviewing schools’ data collection methods and providing instructional support and feedback in advance of a real audit. 

Although the audit program has proved that the reporting criteria improve data quality, it has also revealed some common mistakes, for instance, in reporting mean and median GMAT® scores and calculating the number of completed applications. The audit program has also shown that schools benefit from coaching on how to collect and store data. KPMG found no data irregularities in real audits of schools that had undergone a mock audit.

Update on Audit Program

Planning has begun for the 2004 audit program. The list of eligible schools will be sent to KPMG in April, with the selection process beginning in early May. Schools chosen to be audited will be notified in mid-May, and audits will begin at the end of May and continue through the summer. We anticipate that KPMG will perform 25 to 30 audits, with a majority of those occurring in June.

We already have 10 schools confirmed for mock audits, and five more are under consideration. With the results of real audits showing the benefits of having gone through a mock audit first, we expect (and encourage) more schools to request mock audits this year. Mock audits have begun and should be completed by July.

GMAC®, GMAT®, and MBA Pathfinder® are registered trademarks of the Graduate Management Admission Council®. All rights reserved.