Location Effect on GMAT

It's always fun to speculate about things that can't be established with certainty one way or the other !

Posted from my mobile device

It matters only when you have such misconceptions. Concentrate on your studies and Mock tests. Leave everything else for the computer adaptive test.

Gmat is same for each n every applicants of the world.

It's always fun to speculate about things that can't be established with certainty one way or the other !

Posted from my mobile device

I wanted to take some time to dispel a fascinating—but unhealthy—rumor about the GMAT. This rumor is best summarized by a concerned Knewton student who wrote me the following:

I was speaking to someone in India in the test prep industry about the GMAT and that person seemed very confident that the database of questions for the GMAT test in India is different from the database of questions in the US and Canada (the pool of questions in India being harder). Have you heard anything like this?

And here is how I responded:

You’ve touched upon some topics that interest me a great deal, so let me give you a longer answer.

The test-makers have always used multiple question pools at any one time, even within the United States. This is done for security reasons, so questions can’t be pirated... Question pools rotate every few months. Pools used internationally either just came from and/or will soon head back to North America. These pools are all (almost) perfectly calibrated with each other so that your score on one continent will be—within the margin of error—your score on another.

...

Schools are trying to increase their international exposure, not decrease it. Harvard Business School grads occupy one of the top three positions at something like fifty percent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies. With India and China developing rapidly, HBS and other top schools are eager—even desperate—to mirror that dominance in Indian and Chinese companies. Take my word for it—having gone to HBS and seen their admissions practices firsthand (as well as their legendary habit of nickel and diming their students!)—Harvard Business School is as much or more about Business than it is about School. HBS is, at its core, a factory churning out top business leaders. Those leaders then turn around and give generously to the endowment. That’s the model all B-schools operate under, and it only works if they admit whoever they think will be the most successful.