abmyers wrote:
American schools need to learn how to teach math....so sad here
Couple reasons this conclusion might not be warranted:
1. Foreign GMAT "writers" probably know they cannot hope to compete on verbal, and focus a ton of studying on math.
2. Selection bias. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that the Indians and Chinese who take the test are smarter relative to their respective populations than the average American GMAT taker is to his. In other words, you dip further down into the American intelligence pool simply because you have more Americans taking the test.
In 2010, for example:
China had 22,178 GMAT takers from a population of 1.3B
America had 151,252 from 300MM, about 30x per capita more.
Furthermore, imposing a $250 fee on a poor(er) country keeps a lot of weak math people out of the test. GDP/capita is $50K in the US, $7K in China. Imagine what American scores would be if the test were ~5x more expensive? How much harder would you study if the test were $1,250, and you knew you'd have to pay again that to take it again? If you dare to correlate financial success with math smarts, the argument gets even more compelling.
I'm just spitballing some half baked ideas, but it's interesting stuff to think about and discuss.
PS, where did my thread from earlier go?