The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) recently released the 2022 results summary from its Prospective Students Survey. The survey, which was issued in 2021, garnered over 6,500 responses from prospective MBA students around the world. The resulting summary examines the shifting preferences of prospective students as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the delivery models of graduate management education.
Below we provide a high-level summary of the findings. The full GMAC results summary is available here.
While respondents do not feel that online and in-person formats provide the same value, there is growing interest in hybrid models.
Globally, respondents are still more likely to disagree that an online and an in-person graduate management degree offers the same level of opportunity in terms of networking (79 percent), value (73 percent), and career prospects (66 percent). But respondents are slightly less negative in 2021 than they were in 2020.
Globally, 20 percent of respondents in 2021 prefer a hybrid delivery model, an uptick from 14 percent in 2019.
Hybrid programs are particularly attractive to prospective students interested in an Executive MBA, Part-time MBA, or Flexible MBA, although interest in hybrid models increased significantly for all program types between 2019 and 2021.
Consulting continues to top prospective students’ industry and job function preference lists, though interest in the technology industry continues to grow.
While both men and women express interest in consulting, men are more likely than women to select consulting as their industry (+8 percentage points) and job function (+9 percentage points) of choice.
Women are more likely than men to express interest in the marketing (+12 percentage points), media and communication (+9 percentage points), media/entertainment (+7 percentage points), and non-profit (+6 percentage points) industries.
Globally, interest in the technology industry increased three percentage points from 2019 to 39 percent in 2021. Among non-business undergraduate majors, technology is the most sought-after industry (49 percent). In 2021, a growing number of women expressed interest in technology compared to 2019 (+5 percentage points).
Prospective students most frequently list their post-degree career goals as: obtain a senior level position, get a raise/salary increase, obtain an executive level position, manage people, manage projects, and work for a company where they can travel internationally.
“Become the CEO of a company” provides a notable gender disparity within career goals. Globally, 31 percent of males list this as a career goal, while just 24 percent of females do. In general, U.S.-based respondents are less likely to name this as a goal (21 percent).
In 2021, the number of prospective students interested in changing industries or job functions (32 percent) returned to pre-pandemic levels after an uptick in 2020 (36 percent). Among U.S. respondents, a higher percentage are looking to make a career change (42 percent) which is, again, consistent with pre-pandemic levels (41 percent in 2019).
International prospective students are more favorable on the use of standardized admissions tests.
Similar to pre-pandemic levels, about ten percent of prospective students say that having to take a standardized admissions test may deter them from applying.
About 60 percent of international students agree that standardized admissions tests improve fairness and reliability in evaluating applicants, and that they allow candidates to demonstrate academic readiness. Among U.S.-based prospective students, the number agreeing with those statements hovers closer to 50 percent. Similarly, while 63 percent of international respondents feel that standardized admissions tests increase transparency, just 55 percent of domestic respondents do.
While about half of respondents (52 percent) agree that test waivers make it easier to apply to a program, fewer agree that test waivers make it easier for applicants to gain admission (44 percent).
About 40 percent agree that the criteria to obtain a test waiver does not apply to a large proportion of applicants (43 percent) and the criteria to obtain a waiver is complex (40 percent). About one in five feel that schools should not offer test waivers for the 2021 admissions cycle.