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GMAT's new format promises convenience
Business First of Columbus - by Ralph Katerberg
Anyone considering a graduate degree in business will want to know that the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), taken by graduate business school applicants, will be switched to computer format beginning on Oct. 1.
The new GMAT CAT (Computer Adaptive Test) will replace the current pencil-and-paper version of the test throughout North America and at selected international testing centers. Some 200,000 people each year currently take the GMAT at nearly 1,000 locations in 170 countries; the scores are used in admissions decision-making by more than 1,300 business graduate programs worldwide.
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) expects to have the CAT operational at all sites including campus-based centers, Educational Testing Service (ETS) field offices and Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. sites by 1999.
The test will offer significant advantages, both to the people who take the GMAT around the world annually and to graduate business schools that use the test in their admission processes.
The first will be the ease and accessibility it offers to a prospective applicant to any business graduate program. You will no longer have to wait to take the test four times a year; you can take it year-round. Applicants will be able to take it on a date and time of their choosing.
The new test is more convenient and is much more responsive to the prospective student's schedules and needs.
Students will no longer have to be herded into a huge hall with 200 to 300 other people to take the test. The tests will now be individually scheduled. This new format will help diminish that fear factor.
Another major benefit is the speed with which applicants can "see" their unofficial scores. Test-takers will be able to receive unofficial verbal, quantitative and preliminary total scores immediately after completing the computerized test.
Official scores, including the Analytical Writing Assessment score, will be sent to them within two weeks of testing, once the essay section has been scored.
The transition to the new format involved much more than translating the current paper test into a computer format. It would not be worth the extra expense of doing it by computer if that were the only reason we did this. The new test will allow greater flexibility in what is tested and how it is tested.
An advisory committee with representatives from several business schools debated several issues concerning the GMAT CAT. Among the concerns debated and put to rest were:
• Unchangeable answers. Unlike the paper test with its No. 2 pencil and circles to fill, takers of the GMAT CAT will not be able to erase answers and change them. Once a candidate selects an answer by computer, it can't be altered. The computerized system, on the other hand, allows more flexibility in what can be tested.
In the future, the GMAC hopes to expand the kinds of attributes the test will measure beyond its current verbal, quantitative and essay-writing measurements. The computerized version can also test more complicated kinds of problems and looks at the process the test taker used to answer the problem, rather than just the final solution.
• Keyboard familiarity. Concerned that the computer test would have a built-in bias toward those familiar with keyboards, the committee found that most of the GMAT applicants already have computer literacy. The committee had similar concerns at first about the essay portion of the test, fearing some people would not be able to compose their essays by keyboard. Pilot tests showed this was not a significant problem.
• Security. The committee examined the issue and found the new format would be more secure than the current one.
• Score reporting. Some business schools were concerned about the reporting of scores being switched from quarterly "big batches" to continuous, monthly reporting. The new system will, however, allow more individualized, continuous marketing.
Ralph Katerberg is associate dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration and is chairman of the committee of business school leaders that has advised the test- makers on the new GMAT CAT's implementation.
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