Should you do a GRE or GMAT before doing a foreign MBA?
shifted to Leeds a week ago to pursue her Masters’ degree in Public Relations.
Meanwhile, for students in India with study-abroad ambitions, even the process of applying to institutes of higher education is set to get more expensive. Eligibility tests like GRE, GMAT and TOEFL cost more with the devalued rupee, as do university applications, which vary from Rs 3,500 to Rs 14,500.
“A student typically applies to multiple colleges, so it’s all adding up,” says education consultant Karan Gupta.
Under such circumstances, adds study-abroad consultant Kimberly Dixit, co-founder and president of The Red Pen consultancy, less expensive destinations such as Australia and Canada are likely to become more popular. “We are hearing of students spending extra hours at their part-time jobs to earn more. Some have had to cancel their trip home,” she says. A standardised test is a common pre-requisite for admission to overseas business programmes, but which to take?
Fortunately for Indian students, there are multiple options to consider. including business, the sciences, IT, engineering, and the humanities.
This underscores the intrinsic advantage in opting for the GRE.
The GRE will be the best choice for those applicants who want to pursue their MBA in conjunction with another master’s degree, i.e. a dual degree programme, or in pursuit of a PHD. Taking the GRE allows one to apply to both programmes with one test, which is not only a cost savings, but a huge savings in the amount of time and energy required to prepare for and take two separate exams.
Unlike the GMAT test, the GRE test has a number of features that allow test takers to use their own test-taking strategies, which can reduce the amount of stress involved in completing the test and may even lead to a better score. Within each section, a test-taker can preview and review questions, skip questions and go back, and change answers. These features can give a student a real advantage, since data from ETS shows that most GRE test takers who changed answers went from wrong to right and boosted their scores. And all test takers who skipped a question and later completed it saw the same or better scores.
Should an aspirant take the GRE test and feel not quite satisfied with her scores, there is another benefit to help take the pressure off.
Should an examinee feel the need to take the GRE General Test more than once, she can choose which scores you send to schools. Only the GRE test offers this option.
The author is senior director of global education at Educational Testing Service