Prospective graduate students around the world are beginning to complete part of the application process for graduate school — taking standardized tests. And while University of Iowa students may take the revised GRE for admittance to M.B.A. programs, UI business officials say they prefer the GMAT.
The UI M.B.A. program is now accepting students on a case-by-case basis who have taken the revised GRE.
The UI joins Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison among more than 1,000 institutions around the world to accept students into their M.B.A. programs who have taken the revised GRE.
“[The GRE] gives business schools the opportunity to have access to a pool that’s more diverse,” said Christine Betaneli, manager of external communications at the Educational Testing Service, which administers the GRE.
The revised GRE features a new preview/review function, quantitative reasoning section onscreen calculator, and the new ScoreSelect option, implemented in July.
The preview/review feature allows test takers within a section to skip certain questions, mark them and return to them at a later point and the onscreen calculator allows test takers to make basic calculations on the quantitative reasoning section.
“It allows test takers to have the option paper-based tests allow,” Betaneli said.
The new ScoreSelect option enables test takers to decide which GRE scores to send to schools.
The test taker can choose not to send results from the test center and they can use ScoreSelect to choose which scores they want to send to the institutions they are applying to.
“It’s helping the test taker to make the decision that allows them to show their personal best to the institution,” Betaneli said.
The cost to send additional scores after taking the test is $25 per institution. There are fee reduction certificates for students to help cut down on the cost of sending GRE scores.
The UI accepts most students into its M.B.A. program based on scores from the Graduate Management Admission Test, which focuses more on the analytical and verbal skills of an individual; however, the standard GRE exam does contribute to the pool of admitted students.
“It’s definitely a much smaller percentage than those with the GMAT. It’s much less accepted,” Jodi Schafer, director of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid at the Tippie School of Management.
Last year, the UI’s full-time M.B.A. program had 245 applications and admitted 103 students, with 56 enrolling. Schafer said the program may have accepted three or four students in the past year who applied with only scores from the GRE.
“[The GRE] does measure some of the same things we look for,” Schafer said.
Schafer said both the GMAT and the GRE could be used to assess an applicant’s potential for UI M.B.A. program.
“The GMAT or the GRE tells us whether or not the person is able to handle the rigor of the coursework,” Schafer said.
According to mba.com, the cost to take the GMAT is roughly $250, and according to Bentaneli, the cost to take the GRE is $175 globally.
Three times the number of test takers took the GRE compared with the GMAT last year, Bentaneli said.
Russ Mills, an M.B.A. student enrolled at the UI, said the traditional GMAT tested more analytically.
“It was adapting to more quantitative thinking in some ways and then more application once you know the information and how to apply it to different scenarios,” he said, referring to the GMAT.