The next Generation GMAT

Motivated by ETS's advance into the MBA admissions bazaar with the GRE, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) announced that a fresh GMAT assay will barrage in 2013. Dubbed the "Next Bearing GMAT," the fresh assay will be advised to affected the business academy community's better objections to the accepted exam.

What will the Next Generation GMAT look like? Will it be more difficult? Will there be change in number of questions, perhaps in a different format? Right now, numerous options are being identified, reviewed, and measured—an important and time-consuming activity that is critical before a new test begins to evolve. Developing the best assessment possible hasn’t happened overnight—and GMAC is committed to conducting the thorough review and continual testing at each step along the way to deliver a successful Next Generation GMAT, meeting the needs of business schools and students well into the future

One of those criticisms has been that the current GMAT has a strong bias in favour of Western culture, in part because it is only offered in English. While this does create some built-in unnatural advantages and disadvantages based on a student's native language, one strength of this approach is that it makes it easier to compare GMAT scores of students from anywhere in the world. If, with the new exam, Student A scores a 700 in English and Student B scores a 700 in german, will an MBA admissions officer really be able to treat these two scores as the same? It will be interesting to see how GMAC tackles problems such as these.