GMAC’s New Test For Working Professionals Seeking MBA Admission

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has introduced an exclusive entrance test for working professionals aspiring for an Executive MBA degree open to only those having eight or more years of work experience.

The assessment, known as Executive Admissions (EA), according to GMAC, is “specifically designed to evaluate the business school readiness of seasoned professionals.” Thus, it involves answering a total of 40 questions spread over three 30-minute sections.

It focuses on the skills that are critical both at work and in an EMBA program like higher order reasoning, critical thinking, analysis and problem-solving.

Requiring a modest level of preparation, the assessment will help aspirants identify the skills most needed to be sharpened to be successful in an Executive MBA (EMBA) program. 

Executive MBA programmes are part-time programmes, meant for working executives and are different from one-year and two-year full-time MBA programmes for students with work-experience. The latter aspirants are still required to take the regular GMAT exam.

Like the regular GMAT test, the assessment could be rescheduled, if the candidate feels not yet fully prepared, with no additional fees as long as it is at least 24 hours before the appointment.

The test could be taken year-round at over 600 conveniently located test centres. GMAC claims that having worked with top business schools to custom-build the assessment, it provides an objective confirmation of the calibre of students in the cohort group.

Candidates are evaluated on higher-order reasoning in three areas: Integrated Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Quantitative Reasoning. The scale for each section of the assessment is 0 to 20. The total scale ranges from 100 to 200. English language and math skills are to be used by the candidates to demonstrate knowledge. The assessment is to be completed in 90 minutes.

The cost is US $350 applicable across the globe. This is slightly more expensive than the GMAT charge of US $250. For a re-test, the waiting period is just 24-hours compared to 16 days for GMAT.

The test follows the multi-stage adaptive design that has questions released in groups (based on the candidate’s performance in the previous group).

The regular GMAT requires more extensive preparations and is a 3-hour test. GMAC has brought in EA assessment in the wake of some of the Business Schools like Northwestern’s Kellogg School, NYU Stern, Michigan’s Ross, Cornell’s Johnson, and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School having dropped GMAT among requirements for admissions.

The Executive Assessment is currently accepted at six schools from around the world. Chicago Booth, Columbia Business School, INSEAD, London Business School, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) for their various programs like Global Executive MBA, Executive MBA program and EMBA.