Diversity in Graduate Management Education 2020

Overview

This report curates information from across GMAC Research data touchpoints and external sources to provide business school professionals with detailed and useful analysis of the state of diversity in the GME pipeline in the context of a diverse world.

In the context of this report, diversity can be defined broadly as the representation of variation in peoples’ identities, backgrounds, and experiences. Beyond the traditional diversity lenses of gender and race/ethnicity, this report features analysis and discussion of business school candidate diversity from the perspectives of nationality, academic background, and level of professional experience.

Quick Facts

• Slowly but surely, women are closing the gap in GMAT testing, as the share of global GMAT exams taken by women has steadily climbed from 40.1 percent to 47.1 percent over the past 10 testing years.
• The GMAT examinee pipeline is growing more geographically diverse, and the center of gravity is shifting east. Ten years ago, in testing year 2010, about half of GMAT exams were taken by US citizens (48%) and 19 percent were taken by citizens of East and Southeast Asia. Flash forward to testing year 2019, and the proportion of exams taken by citizens of East and Southeast Asia has grown to 38 percent, and the proportion taken by US citizens has declined to 28 percent.
• While black and Hispanic bachelor’s and master’s enrollments and conferrals have been on the rise, the selective GME pipeline—specifically the GMAT pipeline—has not experienced the same level of diversification.
• Undergraduates’ curricular interests tend to correspond with their major. For example, art/humanities majors are more likely than other majors to say marketing and communications is a “must-have”, while engineering/computer science and science majors are more likely to gravitate toward business analytics/data science.
• Candidates with more experience are more likely to consider cost-effective alternatives to GME, like professional certifications or MOOCs.