Tighten your seat belts. We are ready to take you through another ride in our weekly feature MBA Mondays.

Our recent posts discussed the changes in MBA curriculum. This post mostly talks about GRE tests and what they include.

Master’s in Business Administration from a top-notch business school in US is like a dream for many of us. It offers specialization in many interested areas like finance, marketing, HR, retail, systems, hospitality, healthcare, international business, petroleum and the list goes on. It is obvious that in recent years students consider MBA as a financial investment. Students pay high amount of fees to get the best education and placement from good business school and get good returns in terms of handsome salaries. They also get name recognition and greater career opportunities. Such programs have accreditation bodies so that they can maintain the good quality of master’s business education. Business schools in many countries offer MBA programs tailored to full time, part time and distance learning.

CAT, GMAT and recently GRE tests are highly accepted by business schools. GMAT measures verbal, mathematical and analytical writing skills. There is also analytical writing assessment that consists of two essays. This is coupled by Quantitative section, problem solving and data sufficiency.

Let us see what GRE includes:-

• Verbal reasoning
• Quantitative reasoning
• Analytical writing

Simultaneously GRE focuses on quantitative skills and vocabulary.

The main reason for business schools to accept GRE scores is to attract students who are not focusing on MBA programs. They will have wide pool of applicants and will gain diversity in their programs. If one scores fairly, he or she can get financial aid for higher studies, which is a boon. GRE test has two categories: one is classroom based GRE preparation course and second is online GRE preparation course. If we register for online course, we are benefited by saving our time in travelling to the classes and we can opt for time and date as per our convenience for online preparation. However, students still opt for classroom-based preparation as they think the teacher-student interface is more important.

Some quick sources to choose a right business school

• College fairs
• The Internet
• Campus tours

You can keep this business school checklist handy for your reference.

The most important question is what you want to do with your business school degree.

To answer the above question you will have to answer these three questions first-

What type of industry are you interested in?

What kind of job/profile are you looking for?

What kind of company would you like to work for?

After answering all these questions, you can make a list of potential business school programs. Start comparing them with the help of these points:-

How good is the school in academics? Do they have the best faculty?

What is their class size? What are their teaching methods? How much does the program cost?

What are the career development plans? So on and so forth!

Step no. 2 is to narrow down your business school selection.

After all, committing two years of your life and putting your valuable money into it calls for a careful decision. Your business school reputation will definitely impress your prospective employer. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the attractive advertisements as they are meant to target potential students.

What is good for your friends may not be good for you.

Know thy self…

Meeting alumni of top business schools will gain you more insight on the type of school to choose. Last but not the least, to get a clearer picture get help of admission consultancies. They can be a good gateway to start with.

Future Works Consulting specializes in skill development for students. Our full spectrum of services include pre-application assessment, college section strategy etc. If you are planning to pursue education in U.S. do write in to us with your query and our team of experts would be glad to assist.