MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: Admissions is a Science!
November 30, 2012
What does a 3.8 GPA + 670 GMAT + 4 years of work experience + 3 years of community service equal? The answer is that it could equal nothing and it could equal a letter of admission. It is impossible to respond with confidence because admissions is absolutely not a science. After all, if it were a science the admissions office would just do away with the entire time and resource consuming admissions process and publish a simple formula. Why not make life that much simpler for everyone?
In some countries, there are simple tests which establish benchmarks — one gets into a top MBA program with a score of X and does not with Y. In the United States, some graduate programs have cutoffs for GRE scores or situations where LSAT scores and grades are definitive. Plainly put, when talking about the top global , there is no simple criteria. Instead, the admissions committee reads a file holistically and seeks evidence of your ability to contribute in the class and perform at the highest levels post-graduation. GPA’s, GMAT scores, work experience, etc., are just parts of the larger equation.
While it can be comforting to try to reduce the MBA admissions process to a simple science, as an opaque process suddenly becomes clear and comprehensible, it is unwise to do so. By listening to chatter on message boards or blogs about the “right GMAT score” or the “right amount of work experience,” instead of listening to the word of the admissions officers, who are at pains to explain that the process is holistic in nature (meaning that they evaluate all criteria with no particular scorecard), you expose yourself to, at best, a risk of wasting your time and at worst a risk of wasting your energy on fruitless endeavors. It is crucial that you be your best candidate and thus you need to present your full story, not just some simple stats.
While it can be comforting to try to reduce the MBA admissions process to a simple science, as an opaque process suddenly becomes clear and comprehensible, it is unwise to do so. By listening to chatter on message boards or blogs about the “right GMAT score” or the “right amount of work experience,” instead of listening to the word of the admissions officers, who are at pains to explain that the process is holistic in nature (meaning that they evaluate all criteria with no particular scorecard), you expose yourself to, at best, a risk of wasting your time and at worst a risk of wasting your energy on fruitless endeavors. It is crucial that you be your best candidate and thus you need to present your full story, not just some simple stats.
GMAT vs. GRE
September 28, 2011
The GMAT—a test that is specifically designed for aspiring graduate level business students—is confronted with a relatively new (last couple years) competitor, the GRE, a test traditionally associated with any program besides business, law, or medicine. Why? ETS, the company behind the GRE, has recently received the GRE (August 2011), and the “new GRE” is even more similar to the GMAT than the “old GRE” was. Some might speculate (I among them) that the major GRE revision was a move to try to grab market share. Here are the results:
- 2009: 24% of programs accept the GRE as an alternative to the GMAT;
- 2010: 39%
- 2011: 52%
Those numbers are based on an annual survey of 250+ business schools conducted by Kaplan. As you can see, this year is the first one since we’ve started tracking the issue that a majority of business schools have accepted the GMAT.
If you surf the websites of the two tests, you’ll find lots of stuff on the GRE site focusing on business schools and would-be MBA students. For example, here’s a link to a page titled “Taking the GRE® revised General Test for Business School is a Smart Choice.” Here’s another for an article written back in December 2010 describing and providing links to a comparison tool created so business schools can more easily translate submitted GRE scores into GMAT scores. Wanna watch a seven minute video that goes on and on about why accepting the GRE is a “good business decision?” Have a look at the ever-growing list of b-schools that are now accepting both the GRE and the GMAT.
Click over to the GMAT’s site (www.MBA.com) and you will find hints of GMAC’s main counterstrike: Integrated Reasoning. You’ll need to learn more about Integrated Reasoning if you’ll be taking the GMAT in 2012, because in June of 2012 the GMAT will have an entirely new section, with a separate score and 4 new question types. I hear that we’ll have more to say about that with a white paper coming out in October. The plot thickens…
Students considering taking the new GRE, coming in August 2011, can finally try their hand at the revised test. While we’ve known about the pending changes for some time, the test makers have just released new software, (POWERPREP II) that allows potential test takers a first chance to test drive the revised GRE. Because the test maker’s current prep software is nearly identical to the current GRE in format and content, this release is likely very similar to the new test. But test takers beware: you won’t get a Quantitative Reasoning or Verbal Reasoning score upon completion, only a total number of questions correct/incorrect. So no insight yet as to how all this will translate into the new scoring scale.
Lack of scoring aside, we found out some interesting discoveries as we explored the new test
1. As expected, it’s harder.
a. It’s longer than the GRE currently is – by about 30 minutes.
b. No more antonyms or analogies. Now, there are more complex text completion questions where you might have to fill multiple blanks within the same question. So while vocabulary is not being tested as cleanly as it was in, say, analogy questions, test takers will need to have a very robust command of vocabulary to succeed.
2. Certain questions do look more like GMAT questions. No surprise given that the test maker is hoping to entice more business schools to accept the GRE for admission.
a. We saw reading comp questions in the new practice test that were similar to GMAT strengthening/weakening and bolded statement questions.
3. Calculators are going to introduce a whole new complexity for the revised GRE.
a. Some questions definitely need a calculator to answer. Conversely, on other questions, we were wasting precious minutes trying to use the calculator. (Computing 2 + 5 in your head is a lot faster than trying to use the calculator.) There are lots of questions where knowing a number properties rule or understanding how to manipulate exponents will be much quicker than going to the on-screen calculator. So the trick here is going to be knowing when to use the calculator and when not. Interestingly, this is quite different from the SAT: while SAT test takers have access to a calculator, each question can in fact be easily solved without a calculator.
We’re going to keep playing with the new test, and we’ll share what we find. If you want to learn more about the massive changes, check out our series of seven articles by our long-standing teacher and test guru Bob Verini. There, you can also get more details on the expected changes to the scoring scale.
We’re also keeping a close eye on what this will do to the GRE vs. GMAT discussion. Over the past several years, the GRE has quietly gained ground with more business schools as an alternative to the GMAT. You see, ETS, the GRE test provider, used to also be the GMAT test provider – until 2005 when GMAT and ETS parted ways and GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council) took over administration of the GMAT. Surely, ETS wants that market back – and what better way than to get the GRE accepted at business schools?
Last summer, even Harvard and Wharton joined the team of top b-schools accepting the GRE. Still, in a 2009 Kaplan survey of admissions officers at 260 top MBA programs across the U.S., only about a quarter accepted the GRE. Informally, we’ve heard from top business schools that they will likely wait until they can garner more data from the performance of the revised GRE before making a decision. Of course, just this week, GMAT announced its own changes to the test with a new Integrated Reasoning section. The added drama of the rivalry between test providers should prove interesting.
And what does this all mean for you, the test taker? Well, whether you’re thinking grad school or business school, a test change is coming your way soon. And the GRE test maker knows you will be wary about taking the new test: they’re even offering a 50% on the test fee for people who take it between August 1, 2011, and September 30, 2011. Keep in mind that the trend we’ve seen over the years at Kaplan is that scores tend to go down after a test change. The last time the GRE went through a major change was in 2002, when the Analytical Ability section was dropped and replaced with an Analytical Writing section. Scores dropped 7 points the following year, and continued to decline for the next five years. Our recommendation: take the test before it changes.
Whatever you decide to do, stay tuned for more analysis and details from the GRE team at Kaplan.
What the GRE changes mean to you: the essays, and where should your b-school road lead you?
Like the current GMAT and GRE, the new GRE will offer two writing tasks as part of its “Analytical Writing Assessment.” Unlike the current GMAT and GRE, the new test is planning to deviate from the practice of inserting a standard set of directions into each prompt. Instead, variable instructions more or less unique to each prompt will be provided. You can access the 17 or so published examples and more examples are expected to be revealed over time.
What this means in practice can be illustrated by a simple example. Suppose you’re asked to write an argument in response to a publishing company’s proposed initiative to reorient its business around electronic media delivery. (That kind of proposal has been a standard on both GRE and GMAT for years.) On the new GRE, it would not be a surprise to see the following sentence inserted within the directions:
Be sure to consider the possible consequences of continuing to rely on the print medium exclusively.
Such a sentence would force examinees to think about the alternatives to getting involved in e-media, whereas on today’s GRE and GMAT – which offer no such “customized” instructions – only those examinees who happen to think of those alternatives will bring them up. See the difference?
On the downside, customized directions mean that one really can’t pre-plan one’s structure or approach much in advance. On the upside, one’s brainstorming will be given a specific and directed jump start, which is the surest way to ensure an interesting, substantive essay. Business schools, in particular, will be interested in seeing the results of a more directed kind of thinking process.
What won’t change is the edge that a GRE examinee will possess if she has a strong command of basic writing skills and a practiced affinity for argument. And those skills can and should be learned and improved, well in advance of Test Day.
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We began this deconstruction of the proposed GRE with the basic principle that the GRE is hoping to muscle in on the GMAT’s turf by offering business schools a superior assessment tool, their means of doing so the addition of newly-thought-out question types and better usage of the computer format’s features. Naturally, it’s way too soon to decide when (or even whether) the entrenched GMAT will take much of a hit in this regard.
We do know that some business schools have already begun to accept the GRE in lieu of the GMAT. We can also be pretty sure that the GRE folks wouldn’t embark on this complicated and expensive process if they didn’t feel they had a reasonable prospect of achieving their goals. (Those goals include a better, more predictive test, of course. But the goal of giving the GMAT a run for its money can’t be forgotten.)
Above all, we know that unless there’s an enormous, undetectable sea-change in the wind, the odds of any business school’s totally dropping the GMAT in favor of the GRE – at least in the near term – are long indeed. So just as aspiring college students are free to submit either the SAT or ACT for admission purposes, b-school applicants should be in the enviable position of examining two tests, taking practice tests in both, and then submitting only one real score to a business school. Right now, Kaplan’s advice to the precollege student is to take a prep course for one of the exams – the one s/he feels most comfortable with – and then to take both the ACT and SAT for real. In time, this may very well be our advice to those eyeing business school as well.
The watchword for now is: Knowledge is power. Keep an eye on both the GRE and GMAT websites as these next few months roll along. Take note of individual b-schools’ announced or proposed admissions requirements, especially those in which you have an interest. Don’t be afraid to call a business school or two, and ask them (politely) how they are feeling about this new GRE, and whether they anticipate they’ll accept its scores. And keep watching this space for Kaplan’s take on future developments.
The new GRE will be much less of a mystery by the time it’s first offered. So will the policies of each business school, as it does its own assessment of the terrain and decides what scores, or combination thereof, will suit its purpose: to assemble the very best first-year class it can.
The Revised GRE, Part VI: The Calculator
April 24, 2010
What GRE changes mean to you: Success at a keystroke?
Of all of the changes to the GRE, the one that excites most students is the addition of an onscreen calculator on Test Day. They are elated at the prospect of a reduced need for scratch paper, not to mention the reduced likelihood of errors caused by freehand number crunching. Today’s students are, of course, generally comfortable with new technological solutions to a challenge, and many students are inclined to welcome them unquestioningly.
At the same time, ETS is almost certainly looking forward to the calculator as a clear point of differentiation between the GRE and the test whose business the GRE is looking to steal a big chunk of: the calculator-free, scratchwork-dependent GMAT.
Yet it’s possible that, for examinees at least, the calculator will not be an unmixed blessing. For one thing, it’s quite likely that the GRE testmakers will write problems with the calculator in mind. Quantitative Comparisons will doubtless involve more variable manipulation, bringing them closer (interestingly enough) to Data Sufficiency “Yes/No” questions on the GMAT. In a similar vein, Problem Solving questions are likely to get tougher now that the writers can incorporate more complex calculations than before. It’s a good bet that when the dust settles after a few months, GRE watchers will agree that the difficulty level of the Quantitative Section will have risen, perhaps significantly so.
At the same time, there will surely be many GRE math problems that don’t lend themselves to calculator use. Those students who unquestioningly welcome technological means can be expected to rush to the calculator, even when doing so is inappropriate or when calculating by hand would actually be faster. All standardized tests are set up to reward examinees for their number cleverness, not for a lumbering cranking out of solutions, and sometimes on the new GRE it will simply be cleverer not to use the calculator.
So will the calculator have an effect on scores? If so, the effect isn’t likely to be profound, once the problems themselves are adjusted to compensate for the ability to make quicker calculations. Thinking – that is, the ability to decide the best approach for a given problem at a given moment – will remain the skill the GRE is most eager to assess, a trait it shares with the business school entrance exam that GRE hopes to supplant.
In my final posting, I’ll turn my attention to the forthcoming changes in the Analytical Writing Assessment.
The Revised GRE, Part V: Quantitative Reasoning
April 18, 2010
What GRE changes mean to you: Some things old, some things new
When the new GRE is unveiled in 2011, the Quantitative Reasoning section will look awfully familiar to longtime test watchers (and we at Kaplan employ hundreds of them!). “QC’s” – the well-known Quantitative Comparisons, comparing quantities in Columns A and B – will remain. Also intact will be that mainstay of both GRE and GMAT Quantitative, the math question with five answer choices, only one of which is correct.
Yet there’ll be innovation as well. For one thing, some quantitative multiple choice questions will have more than one possible answer – and just as in GRE Reading Comprehension (discussed in an earlier posting), no partial credit will be offered. As an additional wrinkle, testmaker ETS is suggesting that sometimes they’ll spell out exactly how many (as, for example, “Which two of the following are equivalent to x ?”) and other times they’ll leave it ambiguous, e.g. “Indicate all amounts that could be the average employee salary,” followed by seven possibilities. Such questions won’t respond to mere tactics – that is, one won’t be able to narrow down possibilities creatively – though they’ll continue to be vulnerable to the best strategic approaches and mindset.
Another new question type, Numeric Entry, is reminiscent of the paper-and-pencil SAT “grid-in” questions. Examinees will have no gridding or bubbling-in to do, of course, thanks to the computer format; when asked for the value of x one will have to type in “18.75″ rather than select from among five choices. With no multiple choices to manipulate strategically or to eliminate when stuck, the advantage here goes to the examinee with a strong command of calculation.
As far as graph and data analysis goes, GRE has always put a higher premium on it than GMAT. The new GRE’s Data Interpretation questions will continue that tradition, incorporating traditional multiple choice, “multiple right answer,” and numeric entry questions. The GRE folks clearly want to reward students – especially the prospective business students ETS hopes to pull away from GMAT – for their essential ability to read quantitative information presented visually. If in the coming years the GMAT starts to incorporate more charts and graphs to reflect their extensive use in b-school, remember that you heard it here first.
In our next posting: what calculator use may mean to the GRE examinee.
The Revised GRE, Part IV: Verbal Reasoning
April 9, 2010
What GRE changes mean to you: What to expect in the new Verbal Reasoning Section
In addition to the reading comprehension changes, which we discussed last time, the 2011 GRE exam is eliminating two old verbal reasoning question types and introducing two new ones. Gone are antonyms and analogies, in favor of variations on the old fill-in-the-blank challenge that will reward independent thinkers with supple vocabularies.
Text Completion is akin to the “Sentence Completion” question type currently on the GRE in that both feature individual sentences, one or more parts of which are missing and the student must fill in the blank(s). The big difference is that on the current exam, if there are two blanks to fill, the examinee must choose among five pairs – “(A) separate…instill”; “(B) appeal…support”; and so on – and so we can find shortcuts to narrowing down the possibilities. (If “support” won’t fill blank #2, then there’s no way (B) can be correct irrespective of “appeal.”)
On the new GRE, some text completion questions will feature three blanks instead of just two, and the right word for each blank must be independently chosen from a pool of three or more possibilities. The student still needs to know what the words mean and how they fit in context, but the venerable shortcuts no longer apply. And if students miss one of the blanks, while answering the other one (or two) correctly, the entire problem will be marked as incorrect. (No partial credit is offered; it’s all or nothing for text completion.)
In Sentence Equivalence – the new type taking advantage of the computer format – a sentence will contain a blank and a number of options (A-F if there are six, the likely number) for filling them. The difference? Two of the options will work! And you as the test taker must identify both. And again, with no partial credit given, it does no good simply to see that C will fit the bill without seeing that E does, too. This type will place a greater emphasis on synonymy – understanding the similar meanings within and among word groups – than ever before.
There’s nothing in the new GRE that approaches the GMAT’s emphasis – within Sentence Correction – on grammar, usage, and style, but it will require an even greater vocabulary than the current exam. The new GRE will reward “word power,” for lack of a better term, more than any other current standardized test.
The Revised GRE, Part III: Reading Comprehension
April 7, 2010
What GRE format changes mean to you: A turn for the better?
While the GRE’s overall content breakdown will remain the same for the 2011 test change – that is, it’ll still consist of analytical writing, math, and verbal sections – the specific question types are undergoing quite the transformation. The most radical changes will be seen in the area of Reading Comprehension, where the testmakers are introducing two brand-new question types, both of which take fuller advantage of the computerized format than either the old GRE or the current GMAT ever have.
The first new type consists of multiple choice questions which have more than one possible answer. This is a variation on the traditional “Roman numeral question,” a perennial on the GMAT, in which you are handed three Roman numeral statements and one or more are correct, e.g. “III only”; “I and II only”; “I, II, and III.” The killer tactic for Roman numerals has always been to begin with the one that appears most often, so as to narrow down your options. If, for instance, incorrect statement “III” appears in every answer choice except for (A), then the correct answer must be (A) by definition, case closed.
But in the new type, “I,” “II,” and “III” will be replaced by “A,” “B,” and “C,” and any or all of them may be part of the answer. There will be no pre-set combinations to sort through. Moreover, there will be no partial credit offered; as the ingenue sings in “Oklahoma!,” “it’s all er nuthin’.” The examinee will have to give equal and due attention to all three statements, without Roman numeral shortcut tactics to lean on. Scary? Maybe. You be the judge.
The second new question type is Select-in-Passage, in which the examinee is to click on a specific passage sentence that matches up to a particular task. In other words, she’ll be asked to “Select the sentence that…” addresses a commonality between opposing views; or distinguishes between two phenomena; or shows why a hoped-for outcome won’t take place. This question type requires understanding not just a sentence’s content, but the author’s purpose in writing the sentence and placing it where she does. Both GRE and GMAT Reading Comprehension questions have always rewarded an examinee’s focus on author purpose, but never more so than now.
B-school aspirants who are thinking about going with the GRE will need to make sure they are fully prepared for these new question types. As should be pretty clear, these types require more complex thinking than the current tests’ questions, and are less vulnerable to test taking shortcuts.
Students worried about having to deal with question types that haven’t appeared on any previous standardized tests need to remember that they can still take the current GRE up until July 31, 2011, and a score so achieved will be valid for five years after taking the exam. Or they can go with GMAT and opt out of the whole revision to-do altogether.
Many people believe “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” Whether that devil is the GRE or the GMAT, that’s a proverb you’re likely to hear repeated quite often as opportunities to take the GRE in its current form begin to dwindle, and the choice between GRE and GMAT becomes more acute.
More on the GRE content changes, and how they affect you on your road to b-school, in future posts!
What GRE changes mean to you: an option for greater control
Those considering the GMAT vs. GRE decision (in preparing for the business school application process) will be extremely interested to note that beginning in 2011, GRE examinees will have the ability to move forward and backward within a section, and even to change answers that they’ve already submitted. As you’re probably aware, both GRE and GMAT permit an examinee only to move forward. Up to now, adaptivity – the algorithm’s power to raise or lower the difficulty level of each successive question based on the student’s previous result – has required that no one be able to return to previously-answered questions.
The GRE is retaining its computer adaptive nature. But in ways that could interest only the most committed psychometrician, it has evidently become sophisticated enough to allow examinees to flag questions, and to move past or come back to the flagged material, which still maintaining the integrity of the adaptive scoring.
The impact of the change should be clear, and is huge. It enhances examinee control. It reduces pressure on high- and low-scorers alike. In essence, it merges the best feature of the traditional pencil-and-paper exam – the freedom to invest time where the examinee sees fit – with all the high-tech characteristics of the computer format.
Are there downsides to all this freedom? Potentially, sure. Just as on a pencil-and-paper test, an examinee may find himself wasting time in worry about whether he should go back to a problem or re-do it from scratch. A lot of second-guessing is likely to go on. In many cases, answers revisited will mean right answers changed to wrong ones. In other words, there’s something comforting and direct about the GMAT’s (and current GRE’s) demand that you hunker down on a problem till you’re happy with it, remove it from your consciousness, and recoup down the road should you have gotten it wrong. All of that, for many test takers, may yet trump the new GRE’s permission to work ahead and come back.
Will GMAT respond in kind? Too early to say. Presumably whatever changes to the algorithm and test design the GRE folks have come up with are available to the GMAT team as well. So it may be a matter of marketing and politics as to whether the GMAT goes the same route. One thing you can be sure of: Changing a test this radically is harder than a trucker’s executing a three-point-turn in a narrow alley. If GMAT elects to go this route, we’ll hear about it far in advance.
Next time I’ll begin considering the new GRE’s content changes, and how they promise to stack up to the GMAT.
What GRE changes mean to you: new ways of thinking about scores
If you are on the road to business school and are considering taking the GRE in addition to, or instead of, the GMAT, it’s crucial that you be up-to-date on what, exactly, you’ll face on a particular Test Day. And what you may have heard is true: As rumored for a long time (along with announcements and cancellations over the past five years), the GRE will indeed be changing in 2011.
What has been trumpeted as the largest, most significant overhaul of the GRE in its 59 year history is also one of the most comprehensive revisions in the entire realm of standardized testing. Scoring scale, content, length, and navigation will all be different – some, radically so.
Moreover, the testmakers’ express intent of the revision is to bring the GRE to a place where all, or at least the best, business schools are willing to accept either GRE or GMAT scores for applicant consideration.
I’ll be exploring these changes with you in this series of articles, so that you are fully prepared when the changes are implemented – and so that you can make the best use of this period of time before the changes kick in.
The first thing to consider is the altered scoring scale. The GRE will be moving from its current 200-800 point scale (comparable, of course, to the GMAT) to a 130-170 point scale. This seemingly cosmetic issue has significant implications for test takers.
First of all, the change to the scoring scale is a not-so-veiled hint that the content is in fact changing as radically as rumored. When a standardized test retains its old scoring scale, it means that the changes are in fact superficial. But a new scale means: “Pay attention! Things will be different inside.”
Second, there will be fewer discrete GRE scores available. This makes sense if you consider that the current GRE and GMAT scores are all 10 points apart – that is, you can score a 200, 210, 220, etc. – whereas the new scale will offer scales in one-point increments, e.g. 130, 131, 132, etc. Thus, where currently there are 61 discrete scores up for grabs, on the new test there will only be 41, meaning more examinees clumped together in each score group. Differentiation among those who have earned a particular GRE score on the new scale will be difficult, and should put extra emphasis on other differentiating components of applications, such as essays and letters of recommendation.
(Don’t be surprised, incidentally, if ETS publishes more comparison tools to equate old and new GRE scores, not to mention comparing new GRE with status-quo GMAT. The testmakers have already created a tool for comparing GMAT scores to GRE scores; they are always eager to provide aid and guidance to admissions committees, especially when the creators of the latter are eager to rival or, indeed, supplant the former.)
Watch this space for more information on the new GRE’s content and format changes, and some thoughts on whether ETS’s professed goal of rivalling the GMAT may be within shouting distance.
