Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9408010021
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Starting in October, the Graduate Management Admission Test, the standardized exam that's a chief hurdle for getting into business schools, will contain two essay questions. Too bad for undergrads who thought they had written their last term papers and life would be just a bowl of numbers.
"People who planned to go to business school and get an MBA never thought they'd have to write an essay," said Ed Downey, assistant director for GMAT programs for Stanley E. Kaplan Educational Center Ltd. His New York-based company, a test preparation service, operates a branch in Blacksburg.
The prospect of producing two essays under pressure and deadline is generating anxiety, he said. A significant number of potential business school students took the test early, in June, to avoid the change.
Historically, the GMAT has followed the curricula of business schools, meaning emphasis on quantative skills. Although half of the old test's questions were measuring verbal skills, they tended to question proficiency in vocabulary and grammar. The highest scores went to students whose undergraduate backgrounds are in business and engineering. Students with liberal arts backgrounds didn't do as well.
The new test will shorten sections of multiple-choice questions in verbal and quantitative sections but will add two 30-minute essay sections. For the 210,000 people who take the GMAT each year, it will stretch from a 31/2-hour to a 4-hour ordeal. It also will cost $70 per sitting, or $18 more than the old exam.
For one essay, students will be given two sides of an issue, asked to select one and write about why it is the stronger position. The second essay is intended as an analysis of a single viewpoint, in which the writer is to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the argument.
Each essay will be read by two judges, who will assign scores from 0 to 6. "A 6 paper presents a cogent, well-articulated analysis of the complexities of the issue and demonstrates mastery of the elements of effective writing," according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, a Santa Monica, Calif. consortium of business schools .
It has been 20 years since a graduate business student had to write a thesis to earn an MBA. The requirement was dropped on the theory that it is a professional rather than research degree. So why the emphasis now on writing skills?
The admission council, which owns the GMAT and contracts with Educational Testing Service to administer it, first considered the change 10 years ago, said Ronald D. Johnson, associate dean for graduate and international programs at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business.
"It's an idea that just didn't go away," he said. "As schools tried to make improved decisions on admissions and to assess candidates more broadly, we kept coming back to this idea."
Johnson rejects the idea that MBA programs are more quantative. "The reality is the capacity to communicate is an important part of the program," he said.
While none of the 16 courses that Tech requires for an MBA deals directly with communication skills, students must write case analyses and make oral presentations. They are preparing for business careers, where increasingly the ability to organize thoughts quickly and write clearly and precisely is a measure of who rises to executive ranks.
"Communications is seen as part of good leadership," Downey said. The new GMAT "allows business schools to tell up front who can communicate well."
Another factor is the surge of international students in U.S. business schools over the past decade. About 25 percent of the 525 graduate business students in Virginia Tech's MBA programs in Blacksburg, Falls Church and at television sites around the state, including Roanoke, are from overseas. The largest portions are from China and India. Nationally, the portion of foreign students taking the GMAT has risen from 16 percent to 30 percent in the past 20 years.
Admissions committees usually must judge foreign students entirely on paper, Johnson said. For them, the new GMAT essays will demonstrate their ability to understand and communicate in English, he said.
But "the fundamental impetus for the change is the much greater emhasis in both business schools and in business to communicate effectively and to engage others," said Bill Broesamle, president of the Graduate Management Admission Council "It is more than just cocktail banter. It is the ability to deal with complex ideas ion writing."
And while GMAT scores are but one factor in deciding who is admitted to a MBA program, "it is important for evaluating how well a student will do in the first year" of the two-year program, said Joyce Bohr, admissions coordinator for Tech's MBA program.
For students facing the new test, Johnson has a few words of encouragement. "I don't think we know how to best prepare for it," he said. "Just practice your writing."
by CNB