RESTON, Va. (August 29, 2023) – The Graduate Management Admission Council™ (GMAC), a global association representing leading business schools, today opened registration for the GMAT™ Focus Edition, an updated version of the Graduate Management Admission Test™ (GMAT™) exam, for testing to start on November 7, 2023. Backed by seven decades of leadership in graduate business school education and admissions, the GMAT is accepted by more than 7,700 programs and 2,400 business schools worldwide. The test was redesigned with a more efficient test taking experience and flexible new features to better support and encourage more candidates on their business school journey. Schools will benefit from it as an improved element in their holistic admissions process by attracting a more diverse global applicant pool.
“We appreciate the close collaboration we have had with business schools, corporate recruiters and potential candidates around the world when redesigning the GMAT exam. Our shared priorities are to ensure that the GMAT Focus Edition assesses the most relevant and in-demand skillsets like data analytics, problem solving and critical reasoning, and to help each candidate perform at their best by putting them in control of more flexible testing and score sending options,” said Joy Jones, CEO of GMAC. “Unlike other alternatives, the GMAT Focus Edition is the only admissions test designed exclusively with the needs of today’s graduate business programs at the forefront. We trust it to bring forward the most globally diverse candidate pipeline committed to a business degree and help them realize their education and career aspirations at their current stage in life.”
GMAC introduced GMAT Focus Edition earlier this year, believing that not only will it aid schools in determining candidate readiness but also help them identify scholarship candidates and build diverse cohorts. While GMAT test items have always been subjected to a rigorous process to ensure fairness across key populations by gender, race/ethnicity, country, language, and culture, for GMAT Focus Edition, we took a step further by implementing a groundbreaking methodology newly developed by the GMAC psychometrician team to ensure the fairness of GMAT Focus scores across underrepresented groups. Every potential test question is subjected to a seven-step development and review process, and only ones that successfully pass all content and statistical review processes will be considered for inclusion in the operational GMAT exam.
As the expectations of candidates and institutions have evolved, ongoing refinement of the GMAT exam has kept pace, believes Joёl McConnell, Executive Director of Institutional Relations and Strategic Initiatives at Imperial College Business School in London. “The redesign of the GMAT exam couldn’t have come at a better time,” he says. “With 70 years of leadership in the assessment space, the GMAT Focus Edition will continue to be a critical aspect of the pathway to elite graduate management education. I view the redesign of the GMAT exam as a highly positive development.”
About GMAC
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) is a mission-driven association of leading graduate business schools worldwide. GMAC provides world-class research, industry conferences, recruiting tools, and assessments for the graduate management education industry as well as resources, events, and services that help guide candidates through their higher education journey. Owned and administered by GMAC, the Graduate Management Admission Test™ (GMAT™) exam is the most widely used graduate business school assessment.
More than 12 million prospective students a year trust GMAC’s websites, including mba.com, to learn about MBA and business master’s programs, connect with schools around the world, prepare and register for exams and get advice on successfully applying to MBA and business master’s programs. BusinessBecause and GMAC Tours are subsidiaries of GMAC, a global organization with offices in China, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
To learn more about our work, please visit www.gmac.com
Media Contact:
Teresa Hsu
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thsu@gmac.com