Unique MBA Career Transitions: Stories from Around the World

There are as many MBA career transitions as there are MBAs. Two people at the same business school, from the same industry, graduating in the same year can go on to do very different things, with their MBA helping them in different ways. Whether you’re looking to set up a business, switch to a sector that really excites you, find opportunities in those much-talked-about emerging markets or return to your previous firm with new responsibilities, pursuing an MBA can be the defining turn in your professional life. Read more »

Your New Year’s Career Resolutions

Business school graduates on the job hunt in 2013 will face a more optimistic hiring landscape than they did in 2012—3 in 4 employers recently surveyed have plans to hire MBAs in 2013, up from 69% who hired MBA candidates this year. Employer demand for new hires with master’s degrees in accounting, management, finance, and other business fields is also expected to grow.

Job Market Up for Management Grads in 2013 Read more »

The GMAT Official Blog Answers Your Questions

We are ready to answer your questions about the GMAT exam. Below are questions we recently answered from students via our social media channels.

Question: Does the GMAT exam have a fixed number of questions which would be asked for each subsection of the Verbal section? Is there a set number of Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning? Is this also the case for Quant? Will there be a fixed number of questions for Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency?

Official GMAT: Every exam includes a fixed number of scored questions of each type. Scored questions are those that count toward your score. However, you may receive a varying number of total questions of each type because pre-test (experimental) questions that do not count are also included in the examination.

Question: Say a candidate is really strong in Critical Reasoning and answers a bunch of 700-800 level CR question correctly. Does this mean the subsequent Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension questions he receives will also be in the 700-800 level? Or is each question type judged independently? Meaning there could be a situation where the candidate receives 700-800 level questions in Critical Reasoning (because he’s strong there) but at the same time he receives 500-600 level questions in Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension because he is weak there?

Updated* Official GMAT: If you’ve taken a practice test, you probably noticed that the question types are not all grouped together. After each question you answer, the computer updates your score to the section and chooses the next question. The difficulty is not tracked separately for question types – it is selected based on your current score. So, if you have 700-800 level CR question, then whether you answer it right or wrong can affect the difficulty of the next question, regardless of whether that next question happens to be Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction, or Reading Comprehension.

Question: On my GMAT exam that I took a couple of months back I scored a 50 in the quant section. On my official score report my quant percentile was reported as 92%. However on the latest percentile rankings, I’ve noticed that a quant score of 50 now corresponds to a percentile of 90% . Right now if I send my score reports to schools , what will my quant percentile be?

Official GMAT: Congratulations on your GMAT score! You did really well! To answer your question, the percentile ranking charts are updated in January with the most recent percentile rankings. Schools will typically refer to the most recent percentile ranking chart, regardless of when you sent your scores. I hope that helps!

Have a question about the GMAT exam? Ask us in the comments below. Or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Beat the GMAT, GMATClub or PaGalGuy!

Behind the Scenes: Repeat Testing

GMACProvided by Lawrence M. Rudner, vice president, Research and Development and chief psychometrician for the Graduate Management Admission Council.

Should you retake the GMAT® exam if you are unhappy with your score?

The GMAT exam has been shown to be a reliable indicator of academic potential for graduate management study. By reliable, we mean that randomly selected test takers would perform similarly over repeated testings. If that’s the case, why retake the test? It’s useful to look at who retakes the test, why, and how they perform. Read more »

From Start-Up to Silicon Valley: Use an MBA to Transition Your Career

There are as many MBA career transition possibilities as there are MBAs. Two people at the same business school, from the same industry, graduating in the same year may go on to do very different things, with their MBA helping them in different ways.

Whether you’re looking to set up a business, switch to a sector that really excites you, find opportunities in those much-talked-about emerging markets, or return to your previous firm with new responsibilities, pursuing an MBA or other graduate business degree can be the defining turning point in your professional life. Read more »

To Grow Your Career, Think Like an Entrepreneur

Next week, students, entrepreneurs, businesses, and governments across 127 countries will celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s largest promotion of entrepreneurship. Activities for the event aim to connect innovators with potential collaborators, mentors, and investors to explore new ideas and provide information on what it takes to build new enterprises—a goal shared by a growing number at business schools worldwide. Read more »

Behind the Scenes: Your Role in Validity

By: Lawrence M. Rudner

The Graduate Management Admission Council recently introduced the Integrated Reasoning section to the GMAT exam. It is an incremental change, and both test takers and schools can still rely on the GMAT Quantitative, Verbal, Total, and Analytical Writing Assessment scales that they know and that have well-documented validity and reliability. Most of the material will be familiar, meaning proven methods for doing your best on the exam continue to hold. By allowing you to continue to demonstrate your skills in ways schools understand and already use in the admissions process, this incremental approach minimizes the risks for schools and you. Recent advice in online discussions implying that you should not take IR seriously because, for now, business schools are not is simply wrong. That bad advice could cost you a valuable advantage in admissions. Read more »

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