Factors determining success in a graduate business program

College Student Journal, Sept, 2002 by Andrew W. Braunstein

Data and Methodology:

The database consists of observations on 280 recent graduates (August 1997-June 2000) from an AACSB-accredited MBA program. The MBA program has an approximate enrollment of 300 students, of which about ten percent attend on a fulltime basis. The most popular choice of major is Financial Management. The dependent variable, used to measure academic success, is GPA upon graduation from the MBA program. The independent variables include GMAT total score, GMAT quantitative and verbal raw scores, undergraduate GPA, type of undergraduate degree (business or other), undergraduate institution (same as MBA or other), gender, and years of work experience. As in Adams and Hancock (2000), the work experience variable is measured by a proxy--years between the completion of the bachelor's degree and the first term of enrollment in the MBA program.

The role of the years of work experience variable in the analysis is of special importance to the administration and faculty. The usual admissions requirements for the school's MBA program emphasize the GMAT total and the undergraduate GPA (with some attention paid to the GMAT essay and letters of recommendation as well). In recent years, some of the administrators and faculty have suggested that the GMAT requirement should be waived for applicants with an impressive amount of work experience (assuming an acceptable undergraduate GPA). It is widely recognized that graduate business students with an extensive work background enhance the experiences of their classmates and of the faculty as well. Those contributions take place in classroom discussions, team projects, and within distance learning course chat groups and discussion boards. It is feared that the MBA program loses out on a number of these potentially valuable students during the admissions process. Speculation is that a number of individuals with considerable work experience may perform poorly on the GMAT (in large part due to a lengthy absence from an academic setting), and thus may be denied admission. The admissions office reports that some of those potential students will not even apply for admission to the program due to the GMAT requirement. They may be reluctant to take the test because they perceive that they will do poorly and/or because they do not want to take the time to prepare for the test. Furthermore, some of the college's closest competitors are currently willing to waive the GMAT requirement for applicants with considerable work experience.

Correlation and regression techniques were employed in an examination of the data. The primary goal was to ascertain which of the independent variables are most closely related to the academic success of the MBA students. Also of interest, however, were relationships between some of the independent variables used in the analysis.

Results and Discussion:

Table 1 displays descriptive statistics for all of the variables used in the analysis.

Table 2a presents the correlation coefficients between the dependent variable, GPA upon graduation from the MBA program, and each of the independent variables. Table 2b shows some important correlation coefficients for pairs of independent variables. Table 3 presents the results from a stepwise multiple regression. A coded work experience variable was employed due to a proposal that is currently under consideration in the admissions office. It has been suggested that a GMAT waiver should be granted to certain individuals whose undergraduate degree was obtained five or more years ago. Those individuals would be required to have a minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0, to have been working steadily with evidence of growth in responsibilities, and to have a successful personal interview with admissions personnel. Thus a dichotomous variable was formed for work experience, distinguishing between those with fewer than five years of work experience and those with five or more years of experience.