GRE Eyes GMAT's Testing Turf

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Testing Policies Unclear

In response, MIT has reluctantly modified the language on its admissions Web site to place less emphasis on the GRE alternative, says Rod Garcia, director of MBA admissions. Along the same lines, Stanford has done little promotion of the change since its launch last year, so applicants will likely only discover the GRE option once they have already started the application process. In its first year in place at Stanford, just 2% of applicants took advantage of the new alternative, according to head of admissions, Derrick Bolton, who says Stanford's membership allegiances to GMAC prevent him from further discussing the matter.

Wilson says neither school is in violation of the policy, which while it "mandates the GMAT" also "allows for degrees of freedom."

Beyond marketing, ETS is working on improving the GRE in ways Payne says will better suit business schools. He plans to hold focus groups with business school deans to discuss the use of the GRE. A handful of modifications to the test are already in the works. The changes include replacing antonyms and analogies sections with more reading comprehension that tests inferential reasoning rather than the use of vocabulary out of context. The quantitative reasoning section will include more data interpretation questions and real-world problems, another way the exam will attempt to better suit business schools. "People applying to business schools are really going to see the relevance there," says Payne.

Perhaps the most drastic change will be the addition in 2009 of a soft skills measure called the Personal Potential Index. The PPI will provide a six-part evaluation completed and submitted by outside references who will assign numerical scores to knowledge and creativity, communication skills, teamwork, resilience, planning and organizing, and ethics and integrity.

Opening Doors

For the past year, the PPI has been piloted at Arizona State University's Project 1000, which helps minority students with admission to graduate programs. Michael Sullivan, who oversees the project for ASU, says the index encourages recommenders to write more introspectively about applicants and forces them to quantify their evaluations. Still, he says, "it's too novel and unusual at this point in the game" to determine its efficacy.

While research on the ability of the GRE to measure success in a graduate business program comes nowhere near the volumes of data collected on the GMAT over the years, admissions officers are not dismissing the test as a viable alternative for the future.

"I'm not certain that there's just one test to measure the ability of a student to be successful in graduate management education," says Rose Martinelli (BusinessWeek.com, 10/16/07), head of admissions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, which only accepts the GRE in unusual cases, such as when an international applicant doesn't have access to a GMAT testing center. "I think there may be something there to explore," Martinelli adds. "It really can open up doors to students we don't get."

Porter is a reporter with BusinessWeek in New York. Prior to this position, she worked for The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C. Porter has a bachelor's degree in English from Brown University.