Business Week Online details the building - but quiet - opposition to the GMAT for executive MBA program admissions:
In the last few years, scores of B-schools -- including such top-ranked institutions as University of California at Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management -- have quietly abandoned the GMAT as a requirement for EMBA programs. Some now waive the test on a case-by-case basis; others have cut it from their admissions criteria altogether.That development -- the subject of a raging debate inside the closed-door world of B-schools -- comes at a time when EMBA programs and applications to them are on the rise...
It's the nature of the EMBA itself that makes this a contentious issue. A weekend degree offered to upper-level managers but otherwise identical to its MBA counterpart, such programs draw students with an average age of 37 and 14 years of business experience. For that reason alone, advocates of the waiver argue, the GMAT is not a valid test of the applicant's strengths...
Some schools claim that EMBA applicants may need only a refresher course in quantitative skills, while other universities claim that work skills are so unstandardized that EMBA programs will be in danger of taking in students who can't do the work.
Posted by kswygert at August 1, 2005 07:18 PM