GMAC releases updated Graduate Management Education Admissions Reporting Standards

KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 (Bernama) -- The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), a global association representing leading business schools, has released an updated version of the Graduate Management Education Admissions Reporting Standards.

Led by a task force of 14 GMAC member schools, the revision aims to ensure the standards align with the shifting landscape of graduate business education and today's best practices of identifying gender, race and ethnicity, and undergraduate majors, among other criteria commonly used in the admissions process.

“This work, initiated in response to a strong desire for consistency and transparency from the business school community we serve, is being done to create trust with and among business school admissions professionals, especially those who are new to the field.

“Without a doubt, adopting the standardised reporting criteria at a large scale would allow prospective students and rankings organisations alike to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges across the wide spectrum of programme options available in the market today,” said GMAC chief executive officer, Joy Jones in a statement.

Meanwhile, GMAC vice president of school and industry engagement, Sabrina White said: “GMAC will continue to be a steward of the standards and will publish a list of schools and corresponding programmes that decide to adopt and remain in compliance with the standards.

“It is our hope that more members of the business school community, as well as ranking publishers, will begin leveraging these standards to benefit the people aspiring to better themselves and the world through graduate management education.”

According to GMAC’s annual survey on prospective students worldwide, candidates rely heavily on school websites and rankings in their programme selection process.

The 2023 survey of thousands of business school aspirants, to be published early next month, shows that school websites and published programme rankings were the top two factors in the decision making of individuals considering applying for graduate business degrees.

Informed by this finding, GMAC believes it is vitally important that the information presented to prospective students is anchored in a common definition of the terms used by schools and various publications in collecting the data for reporting.

-- BERNAMA