This post has been republished from original source clearadmit.com.
At the annual Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conference in Denver this past June, the admissions directors we talked to from leading business schools were almost giddy. It was still early in the cycle, but application volume had been high—and applicants had been strong—making preliminary profiles for the Class of 2017 look very exciting.
As students have come to campus and schools have shared their actual Class of 2017 profiles, the cause of that excitement has become clear. The average GMAT score for this year’s first-year students at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management jumped from 716 last year to an all-time high of 724. At Wharton, the mean score for the incoming class this year is 732, up from last year’s record-setting 728. At Harvard Business School (HBS) the median GMAT score rose from 724 last year to 730 this year. (HBS does not publish mean GMAT scores.)
Today, GMAC, which owns and administers the GMAT, released figures from its 2015 Application Trends Survey, revealing that the giddiness at last June’s conference was warranted—MBA application volume was indeed up around the globe, with a majority of full-time MBA program reporting an uptick in applicants. GMAC consulted 641 graduate business programs at 306 universities worldwide to arrive at its findings.
Among full-time two-year MBA programs, 57 percent reported an increase in application volume this year, GMAC reports. Full-time one-year programs had a good year, too: 51 percent saw the number of applicants increase year over year, up from just 37 percent that reported growth last year. Compared to 10 years ago, 60 percent of full-time two-year MBA programs and 53 percent of full-time one-year MBA programs report that they received more applications this year than in 2005.
“This is positive news and reflects a strong full-time MBA market,” said Bob Alig, GMAC’s executive vice president for school products, in a statement. “The full-time MBA continues to be a sought after credential because graduates consistently see a high return on their investment—not only in terms of earnings, but also in job satisfaction and personal fulfillment.”
FEMALE MBA APPLICATION VOLUME INCREASES
We’ve definitely seen an increase in women applicants,” said Sara Neher, admissions director of UVA’s Darden School of Business back at the GMAC conference in June. “Everyone’s talking about it,” she said, referencing admission directors from other schools. “I just worry that they’re not real,” Neher said, half-jokingly.
GMAC’s data bears out Neher’s experience. The percentage of women in MBA applicant pools has increased 3 to 8 percentage points over the last five years for all but one of the program types analyzed, GMAC reports.
Of full-time two-year MBA programs, 51 percent report more women applicants in 2015. This was evidenced not only in the preliminary, anecdotal findings shared by Neher and others in June, but also in the official news from the schools earlier this fall. Kellogg triumphantly announced that women would make up 43 percent of its incoming class, up five percentage points over last year. Wharton moved up to 43 percent from 40 last year. HBS had a two point gain over last year, to report that its incoming class is 42 percent women. UC Berkeley’s Haas School, which blazed a trail last year in drawing 43 percent women, this year still attracted 41 percent and boasts more women in its overall program than ever before. Tuck topped 40 percent women for the first time ever. Darden, for its part, welcomed 35 percent women, a record for the school. Sara Neher can cast her worries aside, those women applicants appear to have been quite real.
Gains in female application volume were not restricted to full-time two-year MBA programs, GMAC reports. Half of all full-time one-year MBA programs reported an uptick in women applicants, 55 percent of online MBA programs saw more women apply, 50 percent of executive MBA programs reported an increase, 55 percent of Master in Management programs saw growth, 56 percent of Master of Finance programs drew more women applicants and 60 percent of Master of Marketing and Communications programs had more women apply. The only program type that did not see an increase in women applicants this year was Master of Accounting, which as it happens continues to be majority female (57 percent).
Source: GMAC
“GMAC is pleased to see that business schools’ efforts to increase the number of applications from women seem to be succeeding,” GMAC’s Alig stated. According to the application survey trends report, 67 percent of full-time two-year MBA programs say that they conduct targeted outreach for women candidates. (Those figures for part-time MBA and Executive MBA programs are 41 percent and 51 percent respectively.)
Another notable shift in this, GMAC’s 16th annual survey of application trends, reveals a positive turnaround in the domestic market for U.S.-based full-time, two-year MBA programs. Of those surveyed, 59 percent reported year-on-year growth in domestic applicants, better than any prior year since 2010. Nonetheless, domestic applicants still make up less than half—45 percent—of the overall applicant pool for these U.S. MBA programs, GMAC reports.
INTERNATIONAL MBA PROGRAMS SEE GROWTH, TOO
Applicant volume growth was not limited to U.S. MBA programs. European-based full-time one-year programs bounced back this year after two years of stagnation, with 67 percent of programs reporting year-on-year growth, compared to just 38 percent in each of the last two years. In the Asia-Pacific region, a whopping 90 percent of full-time two-year MBA programs saw more applicants this year than last. Here, growth in two-year programs perhaps came at the expense of one-year programs, 60 percent of which reported decrease in volume. Unlike full-time MBA programs in other parts of the globe, the majority of applicants to schools is Asia come from within the region.
GOOD NEWS FOR SCHOOLS, INCREASING COMPETITION FOR APPLICANTS
With more applicants to choose from, top-tier schools can get choosier—and they did, as evidenced by the almost universal upward creep in GMAT score averages at leading schools. Responding to a survey question that asked them to describe the ideal business school candidate, school representatives could be heard echoing a few main adjectives: “motivated,” “driven,” “passionate” and “ambitious.”
This was true of all program types. Full-time MBA programs are seeking evidence of an ability to collaborate in their applicants above all else, GMAC reports. For part-time MBA programs, work experience is cited as very important. Specialized business master’s programs, meanwhile, are looking most closely at academic and analytical skills.
Schools also report that academic transcripts, standardized test scores and interviews carry the greatest weight when they are evaluating applicants.
Download the full GMAC 2015 Application Trends Survey.