P&Q’s Must Reads: GRE Scores & Submission Rates At The Top 50 U.S. MBA Programs

Hello everyone  — Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1: GRE Scores & Submission Rates At The Top 50 U.S. MBA Programs 

In the spring of 2023, Poets&Quants reported that the Graduate Record Exam appeared to have peaked: that the test, which for years had been gaining market share against the Graduate Management Admission Test, seemed to have plateaued.

Not so fast. A new analysis of submission rates shows that 2022 may have been just a minor slump. Boosted by a return to mandatory admissions testing at several schools, the GRE bounced back in 2023, with 23 of 54 B-schools analyzed by P&Q showing year-over-year increases in GRE submission rates. The average increase was 7.6 percentage points.

Get the full breakdown, and the average scores at leading schools, in our trending tab.

No. 2: This Team Won The $50K Top Prize In WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce Pitch Fest

And the winner of the 2024 WashU Olin BIG IndeaBounce pitch contest is . . . 

After starting with some 120 student teams pitching their startup ideas from more than 65 universities and 14 countries. After narrowing that group to 14 finalists who submitted two-minute-long video pitches. After inviting three three of those finalists to Washington University’s Olin Business School campus in St. Louis for a Shark Tank-like pitch before three judges. We have chosen ASL Aspire, an online educational platform that teaches STEM literacy to K-12 deaf and hard-of-hearing students, as the $50,000 grand prize winner.

Read all about ASL Aspire in this story, now in our news tab.

No. 3:  In Dramatic About-Face, Most MBA Candidates No Longer Crave On-Campus Learning

A new poll of prospective MBA students shows the declining appeal of in-person study — a remarkable turnaround from just a year ago, when students embraced a return to the classroom after years of remote and hybrid classes forced by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a new poll by education consultancy CarringtonCrisp of thousands of candidates for graduate business education, fewer than one-quarter said they want to study entirely on-campus — a dramatic change from a year ago, when the proportion of students preferring blended or entirely online study had dropped from 38% in 2022 to just 29%, and almost half (47%) said they favored full-time on-campus study.

You can find the new poll in our news tab.

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: How To Improve Your MBA Odds If You’re 30+

This story, which also offers helpful tips to overcome the b-school bias for 20-somethings, is available on our homepage. 

Next: The MBA Rejection Letter: Three Reasons Why You’ll Receive One. You can find this story in our admissions hub. 

Finally: Which Business Schools To Target?. This is one of the most significant decisions you’ll make during the MBA application process, consultant Stacy Blackmann walks you through the process. Find it on our homepage.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert school seekers to our events tab from our main menu. There, you’ll find all the upcoming admissions events for a range of degrees and programs including full-time and online MBAs, specialized masters, entrepreneurship and more. Registration is free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening.