Every February, GMAC launches two surveys—the Global Management Education Graduate Survey (Global Graduate Survey) and the Corporate Recruiters Survey—to gauge the opinions and behaviors of key audiences of graduate management education.
The Global Graduate Survey is a study of the opinions of graduating students about their educational experience and a study of their job search behavior. The Corporate Recruiters Survey is a study of employer opinions about schools and candidates and employer hiring plans. Copies of past survey reports are available through the GMAC Research Library. Below are frequently asked questions and their answers.
Q. What are the participation benefits to schools?
Participation in our surveys is free. In addition, all electronic survey reports are complimentary to survey participants. As a participating school, you will receive actionable data from a reliable source. The following reports are available:
- The Survey Report summarizes the overall significant findings and implications of the results, including year-to-year trends (Corporate Recruiter Survey and Global Graduate Survey).
- The Survey Comprehensive Data Report contains detailed data tables and statistical analysis by various employer characteristics. This report is not available to the general public (Corporate Recruiter Survey and Global Graduate Survey).
- An individualized School Benchmarking Report that compares your school’s aggregated student responses against the student responses from school’s of your choosing. This report is exclusive to your school (Global Graduate Survey).
- An individualized School Benchmarking Report that compares your school’s aggregated employer responses against other aggregated employers’ responses. This report is exclusive to your school (Corporate Recruiter Survey).
- An individualized Survey Database Analysis Report that compares an overlap between your school’s employers and other schools’ employers. It also provides the top 20 companies by the number of unique employer contacts across all schools. This report is exclusive to your school and available to those that provide GMAC with their employer contacts (Corporate Recruiter Survey).
Q. Which schools are eligible to participate?
Any graduate business school is eligible to participate in any of the GMAC survey research studies, regardless of location, size, degree type offerings, program type offerings, accreditation status, GMAC membership, or GMAT® usage. If your school offers a graduate program in business, such as MBA, MS in Accounting/Taxation, Finance, or other graduate business programs, you are welcome to participate in our surveys and get all participation benefits.
Q. How many schools participated in the survey last year?
Corporate Recruiters Survey
In 2009, 157 business schools participated in the Corporate Recruiter survey. Their joint effort generated a sample of more than 28,000 employers. View a list of participating schools.
Global Graduate Survey
In 2009, 203 business schools participated in the Global Graduate Survey. View a list of participating schools.
Q. How do I participate?
To enroll your school as a participant, please use the link that you received in the invitation email and register your information by January 30, 2010 (Deadline extended!). You may also send your request to GMAC-Research@gmac.com.
All graduate business schools are invited to register their school as a participating school. The primary contact at the schools is chosen and schools then choose to either provide GMAC the names and email addresses of their students (Global Graduate Survey) or employers (Corporate Recruiters Survey) or forward the survey invitation directly.
Survey invitations with a unique link to a Web-based survey are sent to the students (Global Graduate Survey) or employers (Corporate Recruiters Survey) in which GMAC has contact information for, and survey invitations with a school-level unique link to a Web-based survey are sent to the primary contact at schools that elected to contact their students directly.
The questionnaire is available at the online survey site from mid-February through mid-March. Two weeks into this time period, a follow-up email message is sent to non-respondents and respondents who did not complete the survey. A separate follow-up message is sent to schools, which they could elect to forward to their students or employers.
Trying to decide whether to provide GMAC with a contact list or to forward the survey invitation to your sample?
When GMAC sends out survey invitations, we assign a unique link to each individual in the sample, which enables us to track their response and exclude those who completed the survey from further follow-up. When you administer the survey, we typically provide you with a link unique to your school, but not each individual in your sample. This prevents tracking individual responses and excluding those that already completed the survey from sending a reminder. As an alternative, we may provide you with survey links for each individual on your list. However, it will be your responsibility to assign these links to every individual when you send both the invitation and the reminder.
Additionally, if you elect for GMAC to send the invitations to your students or employers, the survey may be completed in several sessions. In this case, responses are saved as respondents go through the survey, so if they need to leave the survey for any reason, they can always return and continue where they left off.
If you elect to send the invitation to your students or employers directly, GMAC cannot track individuals and therefore, the respondent must complete the survey in one session.
Instructions if you will be providing a contact list to GMAC
The deadline for schools to submit contacts is January 30, 2010.
We prefer to receive your school’s list in an Excel spreadsheet. However, we will work with any data source that you have—from email or Word document to Access or Oracle database.
At the time of your spreadsheet submission, you may request that specific “seed” email addresses be included on the distribution list. You will receive the same messages as your students or employers (one invitation, and one follow-up). We ask that you identify “seed” email addresses upfront, so that we could exclude them from the sample and response rate calculations.
Information needed for the Corporate Recruiters Survey
Please include employer first name, last name, email address, and the company he or she represents. This information allows us to personalize the invitation and remove duplicates in cases where employers recruit at multiple schools.
Although there is no set minimum or maximum for the number of names to provide for the survey, we encourage you to submit the entire list of employers—those who recruit on-campus and those that do not—to ensure that your employers’ feedback is representative of all employers that work with your school. Please note that we will not be able to provide you with the School Benchmarking Report if fewer than 5 employers that work with your school respond.
We compile a master database from different contact lists that schools send us. We ensure its quality by removing duplicates within the list and across lists, checking for missing information or typos, etc.
Information needed for the Global Graduate Survey
Please include student first name, last name, email address, and the program in which they plan to graduate. This information allows us to personalize the invitation and track response rates by program type.
Although there is no set minimum or maximum for the number of names to provide for the survey, we encourage you to submit the entire list of students—those from each of your graduate business programs—to ensure that your student’s feedback is representative of all students at your school. Please note that we will not be able to provide you with the School Benchmarking Report if fewer than 10 students from your school respond.
Q. How many contacts should I provide?
Corporate Recruiters Survey. Although there is no set minimum or maximum for the number of names to provide for the survey, we encourage you to submit the entire list of employers—those who recruit on-campus and those that do not—to ensure that your employers’ feedback is representative of all employers that work with your school. Last year, each participating school submitted on average 267 contacts. The number of contacts ranged from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 4,012 employers per school. Please note that we will not be able to provide you with the School Benchmarking Report if fewer than 5 employers that work with your school respond.
Global Management Education Graduate Survey. Although there is no set minimum or maximum for the number of names to provide for the survey, we encourage you to submit the entire list of students—those from each of your graduate business programs—to ensure that your student’s feedback is representative of all students at your school. Please note that we will not be able to provide you with the School Benchmarking Report if fewer than 10 students from your school respond.
Q. What does GMAC do with the contact information?
We check contact lists provided by schools against each other to ensure that individual employers do not receive multiple invitations to participate in the same survey. We also assign individuals to their respective schools to run School Benchmarking Reports. We keep on file only contact information of employers that participate in survey to be able to approach them for the next round of the survey. Such contact information is encrypted and stored on a stand-alone secure server; only limited number of people within Research & Development department has access to the files. All contact information of non-participating individuals is deleted from GMAC systems within 30 days after the survey closes. If a school chooses to administer the survey, we delete its contact information immediately after checking the list to eliminate duplicate entries with other schools.
Q. What data privacy and security procedures does GMAC follow?
In addition to survey responses, we will be collecting personal data about participants when they register and enter the Drawing. Any use of participant’s personal data will comply with the terms of the GMAC privacy policy.
We keep on file only contact information of those who participate in survey to be able to approach them for the next round of the survey. Such contact information is encrypted and stored on a stand-alone secure server; only limited number of people within Research & Development department has access to the files. All contact information of non-participating contacts is deleted from GMAC systems within 30 days after the survey closes. If a school chooses to administer the survey, we delete its contact information immediately after checking the list to eliminate duplicate entries with other schools.
Survey responses are stored separately from participants’ personally identifiable information (PII). Similar to contact information, survey responses are encrypted and stored on a stand-alone secure server.
Q. What are the survey deadlines?
The deadlines and timelines for each survey is the same. Below is a detailed timeline for both surveys.
December 2, 2009—Schools start submitting contact information to GMAC.
January 30, 2010 (Deadline extended!)—Contact list submission closes (Corporate Recruiter Survey).
February 5, 2010—Contact list submission closes (Global Graduate Survey).
February 8, 2010—GMAC provides schools that administer the survey individually with invitation text and survey links.
February 10, 2010—Corporate Recruiters Survey and Global Graduate Survey launches.
February 24, 2010—Reminders are sent to employers and students.
March 10, 2010—Surveys close.
April 30, 2010—Electronic copies of reports are sent to participating schools and employers.
Q. What is the deadline for respondents?
The survey for employers will be closed on March 10, 2010. Typically, there is little to no flexibility for this deadline. Employers that have not completed the survey by February 24, two weeks after the survey launch, will receive one reminder. The survey link will become inactive at 11:59 PM EST on March 10.
The survey for students will be closed on March 10, 2010. Typically, there is little to no flexibility for this deadline. Students that have not completed the survey by February 24, two weeks after the survey launch, will receive one reminder. The survey link will become inactive at 11:59 PM EST on March 10.
Q. Can I view the questionnaire or online survey prior to launch?
Yes, please send your request to gmac-research@gmac.com.
Q. How long is the survey?
It should take no longer than 15 minutes to complete the survey. The survey timing analysis last year showed that, on average, each respondent spent 12 minutes to complete the survey.
Q. What language is the survey in?
The online survey is in English (Global Graduate and Corporate Recruiters Surveys) and Spanish (Corporate Recruiters Survey).
Q. What are participation benefits to survey respondents?
Corporate Recruiters Survey
Employers that complete the survey will be placed in a drawing for one of five US$1,000 American Express gift cards or gift cheques. In addition, they will receive a complimentary copy of the survey results—actionable information on overall hiring projections and compensation packages, as well as recruitment and hiring strategies for their industry and geographic region. As employers are able to benchmark their performance against the performance of similar organizations, they often tell us that they value an opportunity to take part in this research.
Global Graduate Survey
First, this survey provides a unique opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns to school professionals in a confidential manner. Second, every participant is entered in a drawing to receive one of five US$1,000 American Express Gift Cards. In addition, students have access to the reports so that they can benchmark their experiences and career progress with their peers. Finally, students are provided the opportunity to continue in the research process through the GMAC Alumni Perspectives Survey, which allows graduates the unique opportunity to continually monitor their career progress in relation to their peer group.
Q. Can I find out who won the drawing?
To obtain the names of the winners, you may send a request, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, to Legal Department, Graduate Management Admission Council, 1600 Tysons Blvd., Ste. 1400, McLean, VA 22102 USA. (Residents of Vermont need not supply postage). You will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to receiving the winners list.
Q. Did we answer all your questions?
If you have any questions or need additional information about the project, please send your request to GMAC-Research@gmac.com. You may access last year’s publicly available reports at the main Corporate Recruiters Survey page and the main Global Graduate Survey page accessible through http://www.gmac.com/gmac/ResearchandTrends/SurveyReports/.