Thursday, September 03, 2009

B-School Entrance Test Smackdown: GRE vs. GMAT

Inside Higher Ed -- One of the hot battles in standardized testing these days is over the M.B.A. market. The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) has long been dominant. In 2003, the Educational Testing Service lost its contract for the GMAT exam to ACT and a Pearson division, and a few years later, ETS was talking about encouraging business schools to consider the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) as an alternative to the GMAT and a growing number of top business schools have agreed to accept either test (Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, NYU, and University of Virginia).

Here's a comparison of the GRE and GMAT, showing that the GRE has many advantages over the GMAT: faster score reporting time (10-15 days for GRE vs. 20 days for GMAT), available in more countries (165 vs. 110), GRE is both computer-based and paper-based and GMAT is computer-based only, GRE is slightly shorter (3 hours and 15 minutes vs. 4 hours), and probably the most important difference: $150 for the GRE ($180 in most foreign countries) vs. $250 for the GMAT.

Here's another link with comparison data of the test questions.

3 Comments:

At 9/03/2009 12:08 PM, Blogger Dan Carroll said...

I've taken both tests - 760 on the GMAT and 1600 on the GRE (I would have had a perfect math GMAT, except I flubbed the first question due to nervousness). In general, the math sections are comparable, with the GMAT slightly more advanced. The GRE is superior on verbal, with more variety, greater difficulty, and better quality/less ambiguous questions. The GRE essay part is definitely more difficult, as one is competing against English lit majors who are not interested in the GMAT.

 
At 9/03/2009 12:22 PM, Blogger Shawn said...

So...competition is good? Who knew!?

Dan...that makes my 5.5 on writing seem pretty darn great, then, especially for a landscape architecture undergrad. :)

 
At 9/03/2009 2:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dan, maybe it was the humility section where you scored poorly. lol

kidding...your post had useful info

 

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