Duke Fuqua’s MBA program is among the first business schools to announce they will accept scores from applicants who took the new, shorter versions of the Graduate Management Admission Test and Graduate Record Exam.
Harvard Business School may not be accepting the new Graduate Management Admission Test this cycle, but at least one elite B-school will be.
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business has announced that it will accept scores from the new GMAT Focus as well as the revised Graduate Record Exam submitted by applicants to the Daytime MBA program.
The Fuqua School also announced it will have a new optional section in the biographical section of its MBA application, as well as an option to indicate interest in the Fuqua Impact Scholars program. And it is keeping its popular fourth application round, which was created in 2022-2023.
‘NO PREFERENCE’ FOR WHICH TEST SCORE AN MBA APPLICANT SUBMITS
Duke’s Allison Jamison: “Our goal every year is to find new ways to make the MBA application process less stressful and more straightforward”
The Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, announced the release of the GMAT Focus Edition in March. The revamped test will have 10 fewer Quant and 13 fewer Verbal questions and be nearly one hour shorter. It will include Quantitative, Verbal, and Data Insights sections, the latter of which will replace the current Integrated Reasoning section. However, while a registration date in late August has been set for the new GMAT, test dates have not yet been announced, leading Harvard Business School to declare that to avoid confusion it will not accept either of the new tests in the 2023-2024 cycle.
GRE is not only beating GMAT to market with its shorter test, allowing test takers to register for its new exam now; it is also making it quicker to take by 17 minutes: an hour and 58 minutes for the new GRE versus the new GMAT length of two hours and 15 minutes, without breaks. The old GRE exam was three hours and 45 minutes long, while the current GMAT test is three hours and seven minutes, without the optional eight-minute breaks.
“Fuqua will accept both of the new test format scores and also continue to accept the standard GMAT and GRE exams, as well as the Executive Assessment,” Allison Jamison, assistant dean of admissions, writes in a blog published June 27. “As always, we have no preference for which test score a candidate submits. They should choose the test that is the best fit for them. Applicants are welcome to submit more than one test score and/or test format, and our Admissions team will consider the score that is most beneficial to the applicant. We will continue to require at least one valid test score for all applicants.”
Fuqua will also keep its fourth MBA application round because, Jamison writes, “One of the most important lessons learned during the past few rather tumultuous years is that the future is always uncertain. Between a lengthy pandemic, global economic uncertainty, and mass layoffs, we have all felt the effects of a rapidly changing world. In the 2022-2023 year, we made the decision to add an application deadline to help applicants who may have made the decision to apply to business school a little later in the application cycle, and we had a very positive response to the new round.”
NEW APP INCLUDES SPACE ‘TO SHARE A LITTLE BIT MORE’
In addition to accepting the new GMAT and GRE and keeping a fourth application round, the Fuqua School announced that while it is leaving its essay questions the same as in previous years, it has added a new optional section within the biographical pages of the application to “allow applicants to share a little bit more about their personal stories if they wish. Applicants who may be the first in their family to attend college, those who grew up facing financial hardship, or any other unique lived experience may now use this section of the application to help our Admissions team understand how that background has influenced their life, education, or career,” Jamison writes.
Additionally, the school has added a short-answer question to allow applicants to indicate an interest in the Fuqua Impact Scholars program, to choose up to two centers they are interested in, and a short-answer response to share how they might engage as an Impact Scholar. The Impact Scholars program is a set of named, merit-based scholarships for high-potential admitted students who intend to make an impact on the world through business with a focus area that is tied to one of Fuqua’s research centers.
“In Admissions, our goal every year is to find new ways to make the MBA application process less stressful and more straightforward,” Jamison writes. “We want to ensure that our application allows applicants to feel comfortable being fully themselves by highlighting their unique strengths, skills, and aspirations.
“We hope these changes will make it even easier for candidates to provide their strongest application and we look forward to getting to know each of them.”
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