Are you trying to apply for an EMBA program but don’t know where to begin? Want to study for the Executive Assessment (EA) while juggling limited free time? Have you been unable to find adequate EA study materials? We created our newest offering, the Executive Assessment Masterclass, just for you! Read more

With immigration being a current hot-button issue in the U.S., many international MBA students are understandably concerned and confused about studying there. For those who find themselves with questions on immigration and studying abroad, the people at GMAC (the makers of the GMAT exam) have dedicated a page on their website to providing resources on those topics.

These resources include: Read more

Register for free and learn more today at fortefoundation.org/aimhigher.

Forté Forums are designed for standout women considering an MBA, whether you’re a high-achiever looking to change careers, a college student planning for the future, or a professional ready to take your career to the next level. Read more

Big news! GMAC, the makers of the GMAT, have launched a new test, the Executive Assessment exam. It contains the same question types as the GMAT, but fewer content areas are tested, and there aren’t as many questions to answer. The exam is intended for candidates applying to Executive MBA (EMBA) programs.

Do I have to take it?

Read more

All registrants will be able to enter for a chance to win a GMAT Complete Course or Interact self-study option with Manhattan Prep.

The Access MBA Tour, the worldwide leader in One-to-One business education events, will return to Toronto on Thursday, March 17^th, from 4:30 PM to 10 PM at the Fairmont Royal York, as well as to New York City on Tuesday, March 22^nd from 4:30 PM to 9:30 PM at the Warwick New York Hotel, the Advent Group announced today. Read more

U.S. News & World Report today released the 2016 Best Graduate School rankings.  As our friends at mbaMission have reminded us, all rankings should be approached with skepticism. “Fit” (be it academic, personal, or professional) is a far more important factor when choosing a school.

That said, here’s how the top 15 American business schools stack up this round:

1. Stanford University

2. Harvard University

3. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)

4. University of Chicago (Booth)

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)

6. Northwestern University (Kellogg)

7. University of California, Berkeley (Haas)

8. Columbia University

9. Dartmouth College (Tuck)

10. University of Virginia (Darden)

11. New York University (Stern)

11. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Ross)

13. Duke University (Fuqua)

13. Yale University

15. University of California, Los Angeles (Anderson)

See the full list and check out the rankings by MBA programs and specialties, here.

We’ve invited our friends at mbaMission to share their 2016 MBA Class Profile Infographic! Check out their findings below and visit mbamission.com to sign up for a free consultation.

Choosing the right MBA program for your needs can be challenging. How do you identify the best one for your specific personal, educational, and professional goals? Read more

Last week, I attended the annual GMAT Summit, held by the fine folks at GMAC (who own / make the GMAT), and I have some interesting tidbits to share with you.

It really is a myth

You know what I’m going to say already, don’t you? The first 7 (or 10, or 5) questions are not worth more than the questions later in the exam. I’ve written about this topic before but I’m going to mention it once again because of something that happened at the conference.

Fanmin Guo, Ph. D., Vice President of Psychometric Research at GMAC, was answering questions after a presentation on the test algorithm. A couple of people were peppering him with questions about this myth and apparently just didn’t seem to believe that it could possibly be true that the early questions aren’t worth more. One of the questioners also made a pretty significant faulty assumption in his arguments—and now I’m worried that an article is going to pop up trying to revive this debate. I don’t want any of my students led astray on this topic.

First, to understand why the early questions actually aren’t worth any more than the later ones, see the article I linked a couple of paragraphs back.

Second: here was the faulty assumption that I heard:

“You said that the earlier questions aren’t worth any more than the later ones. So you’re telling us that students should spend the same amount of time on every question.”

Dr. Guo was saying the first part: that the location of a question on the test doesn’t impact its weighting in the overall score. He and the other GMAC folks weren’t saying anything, though, about how you should take the test.

In fact, it would be silly to spend exactly the same amount of time on every question. Some questions are harder than others. In addition, you have various strengths and weaknesses in terms of both accuracy and speed. There are, in fact, very good reasons not to spend the same amount of time on each question. All Dr. Guo was saying was that the location of the problem in the section is not one of those reasons.

So, if you read something that says that you should spend more time on the earlier questions, roll your eyes and click away. Alternatively, if you read something that concludes that you should spend the same amount of time on every question, drop that source as well. Take a look at the data in my other article to see that GMAC actually does know what it’s doing and the GMAT is not just a test of how you perform on the first 7 or 10 questions.

GMATPrep offers more data

GMAC has been building more score reporting functionality into GMATPrep to give us a better idea of how we do when we take the official practice CATs. In fact, this capability has already launched! I need to go download the newest version of GMATPrep to see exactly what’s offered (and I’ll report back to you once I’ve done so), but they’ve started to offer data for sub-categories such as question type and content area.
Read more

Are you ready for the 2014–2015 MBA application season?

Join Manhattan Prep, mbaMission, and Poets & Quants for a free, five-part webinar series to help you prepare!

Three leaders in the MBA admissions space—Poets & Quants, mbaMission and Manhattan Prep—are banding together to ensure that you will be ready for the 2014–2015 MBA admissions season. Together, we are launching a free, five-part webinar series entitled “Five Steps to Business School Acceptance”! In each of the first four sessions, a senior consultant from mbaMission will address and explain a different significant admissions issue, while Poets & Quants’ John Byrne serves as host, moderating any questions and answers. Then, an expert from Manhattan Prep will present a challenging GMAT issue, offering insight, advice and more. The fifth and final session consists of a discussion panel with current admissions officers, sharing their thoughts and answering questions about the upcoming admissions season.

We hope you will join us for this special series. Please sign up for each session separately via the links below—space is limited.

Session 1: March 19, 2014 – Watch the recording of our first session here to see what all of the buzz is about! 

Session 2: April 2, 2014 – Click Here to watch the recording of Choosing the Right B-School and Advanced Quant

Session 3: April 16, 2014 –  Click Here to watch the recording of What Can I Do with My MBA? and Getting the Most Out of Your Practice GMAT Exams

Session 4: April 30, 2014 – Click Here to watch the recording of  the Essay Writing Workshop and Advanced Sentence Correction

Session 5: May 14, 2014 – Questions and Answers with MBA Admissions Officers

Do you have questions for our GMAT and MBA admissions experts? Ask them in the comments below, and we will do our best to answer them in the Q&A sessions following each presentation, or reach out to use on social using the hashtag #fivesteps.