GMAT Testing Hits Several New Records

Other major trends:

• The percentage of exams taken by women hit 43% in 2012—a record for the third straight year. Women made up the majority of test takers for citizen groups in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Russia.
• More younger people are taking the exam, as the percentage of tests taken by those younger than 25 was 47% in 2012, up from 38% in 2008. More than half the Asian and European citizens taking the GMAT exam were under 25.
• With 58,196 exams taken in 2012, Chinese test takers are the second-largest citizenship group after the U.S. and now represent 20% of global testing.  The proportion of scores Chinese citizens sent to the U.S. was up slightly (78% in 2012, compared with 77% in 2008) as their interest in specialized master’s programs has increased — from 43% of scores sent in 2008 to 64% in 2012.
• Indian citizens, the third-largest citizenship group, took 30,213 GMAT exams in 2012, and test takers are sending a higher percentage of scores to programs in India, the United Kingdom, Singapore, France and Canada.
• European citizens sat for 24,847 GMAT exams in 2012, up 26% from 2008, and they sent more than 60% of their scores to programs in Europe, the highest level ever. Citizens of Germany, France, Russia, Italy and the UK together sat for more than half the region’s exams in 2012.
• More test takers are sending their GMAT scores to specialized master’s degrees in business, such as master of accountancy, finance and management. In 2012, 29% of all scores were sent to specialized masters programs, up from 17% in 2008.
• The percentage of U.S. test takers sending their scores to U.S. schools remains a world-leading 98%. The U.S. remains the top score-sending destination, with 76 percent of more than 831,000 score reports sent to business schools in the U.S.Significant regional differences exist in terms of GMAT score-sending behavior. For example, citizens from Central & South Asia sent an average of 4.3 score reports per exam taken in TY 2012. In contrast, Western Europeans sent only 2.1 score reports on average.
• Central and South Asian test takers sent score reports to the most schools, about 4.3. That compared with 2.9 worldwide and in the U.S. (See table below).

Source: GMAT 2012 World Geographic Trend Report

The United States remains the leading score-sending destination for GMAT examinees. US-based graduate business programs received 630,406 score reports in testing year 2012 or 76% of total scores sent. Although the number of scores sent to the United States was significantly higher in TY 2012 than when compared with 2008, the market share for US schools declined from 81% to 76% over the period. GMAC attributed the decline to several factors, including greater usage of the GMAT exams for admissions by high-quality graduate management programs around the world. The United Kingdom and Canada were the second and third preferred score-sending destinations in both years. Israel fell off the top 10 destination list in 2012, replaced by Germany,