Aspiring Business School Applicants Increasingly Using GRE® Scores

The number of GRE test takers indicating business study nearly doubled in 3 years

PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 28, 2015 — Students around the world looking to earn their MBA or specialized master’s degree in business are turning to the GRE ® Program to achieve their academic goals. As of the testing year ending June 30, 2015, the number of individual GRE test takers intending to study business grew by more than 10 percent over the prior year, and almost doubled since the testing year ending June 30, 2012.

During the recently completed 2014–2015 testing year, citizens from more than 200 countries/regions worldwide sat for the GRE ® revised General Test and the total number of individuals increased again for the third consecutive year. The globalization of higher education can be further seen as nearly seven percent more non-U.S. citizens took the GRE revised General Test compared to the prior testing year.

Some notable trends:

– More than 96,000 citizens from India took the GRE revised General Test, up 12 percent from the prior year, continuing a multiyear growth pattern.
– The number of Chinese citizens taking the test grew about 1.6 percent and has remained stable for the last three years.
– Other Asian countries continued to produce a steady flow of GRE test takers. The number of Korean citizens who took the GRE revised General Test increased nine percent, citizens from Taiwan increased five percent and the number of individuals from Japan remained flat.
– The stream of individuals from African countries continued to grow in 2014–2015, up 19 percent since last year.
“U.S. citizens continue to take the GRE revised General Test in great numbers,” said David Payne, Vice President & COO of Global Education at Educational Testing Service. “As higher education mobility patterns evolve we are seeing astounding growth from almost all regions of the world. It is a worldwide endorsement of the value of a higher education degree.”

Moreover, the 2014–2015 GRE data show increases in noteworthy fields for intended graduate study such as business (+10 percent) and engineering (+3.7 percent). Other STEM fields, such as health and medical sciences (+2.4 percent) and computer science (+15 percent), also attracted high volumes of test takers.

Payne adds, “The trend in business fields makes a lot of sense. The GRE revised General Test is a great option for applying to MBA and specialized master’s programs. Students can skip questions and change answers on a GRE test, which data show helps lead to better scores. Plus, if test takers decide to take the test again, they can send only their best set of scores.”

GRE scores are accepted at thousands of institutions around the world, including more than 1,200 business schools accepting GRE scores for their MBA programs. Currently, 94 of the 2016 U.S. News & World Report top 100 business schools in the United States and 82 of the top 100 institutions on The Financial Times 2015 Global MBA Ranking accept GRE scores. In addition, 29 of Bloomberg Businessweek top 30 U.S. MBA programs accept GRE scores.

Most schools are following Harvard Business School’s lead in weighting GRE scores equally with other business school admission tests. As noted on its website, “There is no minimum GMAT or GRE [score] to apply and we do not have a bias toward one test or the other.”

To learn more about the GRE revised General Test, view a one-minute overview at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDv_VXTZK3E&feature=youtu.be or to register to take a GRE test, visit ets.org/gre.

At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC ® tests, the GRE ® tests and The Praxis Series ® assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org