Posted on: May 18, 2009

Purpose and Mission

More than 50 years ago, the GMAT® exam was created by representatives of leading business schools to meet a common need for an exam designed specifically for potential graduate business students. Throughout the years, the continued involvement of business school faculty and key administrators has been vital to ensuring the high quality of the exam. Now, as we begin work on the Next Generation GMAT, we have convened an advisory group of faculty members and programme directors from leading global business schools to once again play a critical role in finalizing the list of skills to be measured, as well as the blueprint of the Next Generation GMAT.

The advisory group met on 11 February 2009, to evaluate skills to be measured on the Next Generation GMAT. In describing this initial session, participant Luis Palencia, associate dean, MBA Programme, IESE Business School, commented, “The process of preparing for the Next Generation GMAT has been both well-planned and extremely sensitive to the needs and concerns of business schools. If this first stage is an indicator of the final result, I know that the new exam will be innovative, valuable, and successful.”

These schools were represented on the advisory group:

Cambridge University
Duke University
Georgia Institute of Technology
IESE Business School
London Business School
Northwestern University
Stanford University
University of Virginia
Yale University

Skills Evaluation Process

The list of skills to be evaluated by the advisory group reflects the findings of two curriculum studies, along with best practices in test development. The first curriculum study, conducted in 2006, focused on whether the GMAT still measured the skills business schools desired in applicants to traditional MBA programmes. The second study, in 2008, looked at the applicability of the GMAT as an admission criterion for pre-experience programmes in Europe.

Faculty members divided into two groups to conduct their work. One group evaluated verbal and analytical writing skills, while the other concentrated on quantitative skills. The groups debated the skills they wanted entering students to possess as well as the skills that faculty generally prefer to teach. The advisory group also made suggestions about subject areas that broad GMAT sections covered, including arithmetic, statistics, and analytical reasoning.

Finally, the advisory group served as a pilot study group for a survey on the importance of each skill identified and the mastery students should possess over each of these skills. This survey has been administered to faculty members worldwide.

Next Steps

The results of the survey will enable us to finalize the skills to measure on the Next Generation GMAT.  Simultaneously, we will begin exploring what types of questions to include on the Next Generation GMAT in order to provide the best information about an applicant’s mastery over these skills.