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Beyond Cognitive Testing
The GMAT: Not the Only Tool
by Carlotta Mast
The Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management is one of the more than 160 MBA schools around the world that uses the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, as an admissions tool. And Judy Johnson, dean of admissions at Thunderbird, says her job would be much more difficult without the GMAT.
“I happen to feel that the GMAT score and the subscores are very telling,” she says. “I would hate to make an admissions decision without them.”
While Johnson and the other admissions professionals interviewed for this article say they would never admit or reject a candidate simply on the basis of GMAT scores, most agree the test does a good job of assessing a prospect’s academic aptitude, which is critical in determining whether an applicant will struggle or excel in the classroom.
“We tell our candidates that the GMAT score is not everything,” says Brook Hardwick, associate director of admissions at IESE at the University of Navarra in Barcelona, Spain. “But we always back that up by saying it is, for us, a good indicator of their potential for success in our program.”
The GMAT also serves as a universal tool for comparing diverse candidates from diverse backgrounds, says Linda Meehan, assistant dean and executive director of admissions at Columbia Business School. “The true benefit of the GMAT is it is the common denominator among the applicant pool,” she says. “When your pool is strong, as ours has been, most candidates are scoring extremely well. So how an applicant compares to the rest of the pool becomes part of the evaluation.”
Many admissions professionals say that given the analytical bent of the MBA curriculum, they particularly scrutinize an applicant’s quantitative subscore.
“If someone majored in a liberal arts curriculum and took no quantitative course work, or perhaps took one quantitative course and received a B or B-, we will look directly at the quantitative subsection of the GMAT score to see whether the applicant has the quantitative ability to succeed in our program,” says Jett Pihakis, director of domestic admissions at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “We do pay more attention to the quantitative score than we do to the verbal score because our curriculum is so quantitatively focused in the first year.”
But for Johnson of Thunderbird, the verbal and analytical writing assessment subscores are equally telling.
“Everyone has to reach a certain level in their quantitative scores to be able to do the course work—either they are there or they are not,” Johnson says. “My goal in admissions is to bring in a group of people who will add value to one another, and if they can’t communicate, if they can’t develop thoughts, if they can’t present an argument, then that capacity is limited. I use the GMAT to assess those abilities.”
The verbal and analytical writing assessments can also help admissions professionals gauge the English-language skills of international applicants. “We use the TOEFL score first and foremost,” Pihakis says, “but the analytical writing score often gives us a sense of their ability to reason in English.”
Hardwick of IESE says she uses the GMAT in conjunction with a candidate’s academic record and work history to assess other, more intangible qualities, such as motivation.
“When we see a weaker academic background on a candidate, sometimes a very high GMAT score will tell us that we are dealing with an underachiever,” Hardwick says. “Sometimes we also have people with low GMAT scores who show extremely high potential in other areas. So in that case, it may be that we are dealing with someone who doesn’t work well under time restrictions. To a certain extent, candidates who prepare for the GMAT and come up with better scores show how serious they are about getting into a school.”
Like most schools, HEC (Haute Etudes Commerciales) School of Management in France has an official policy not to have an official minimum GMAT score.
“Obviously, a GMAT score can be eliminatory,” says Joshua Kobb, HEC’s MBA program director. “But we don’t want to make a decision based only on one element, whether that is the GMAT, the age, work experience, or other element within the application.”
“The GMAT is a very important component, but we are not GMAT driven,” adds Michelle Jacobson, director of graduate business programs at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. “If someone applies with a 710 GMAT, they won’t be automatically admitted.”
While a candidate’s GMAT score is certainly valuable in the admissions process, the bottom line is this: It cannot be used in isolation.
“I have always been impressed that [the GMAT] does what it is supposed to do quite well,” says Steven DeKrey, associate dean and director of the MBA program at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “But what it doesn’t do is predict how one will operate in a managerial role or business environment or on a team, all of those things that help you assess leadership ability. So, yes, we have to use it because we are running academic programs. But we have to go way beyond it.” //
Carlotta Mast, a freelance contributor to Selections, has also written for Business Week online and Working Woman magazine. Her article “The Art of Admissions” appears in the spring 2002 issue of Selections.
© Selections: Spring 2002