About the Executive Assessment
GMAC (the organization that makes the GMAT) launched the Executive Assessment in 2016 as a readiness assessment for certain kinds of specialized business masters programs, primarily targeting Executive MBA programs (though it’s used much more extensively now—more on that later). For those who have the choice, the EA is the best option in almost all cases—we’ll talk about why in a little bit.
In this post we’ll cover the following topics:
- What is a Readiness Assessment?
- What the Executive Assessment Really Tests
- Executive Assessment Exam Information
- What Kinds of Programs Accept the Executive Assessment?
What is a Readiness Assessment?
The Executive Assessment (EA) has all of the same question types as the GMAT and the EA tests most of the same kind of content, but it is different than the GMAT in several important ways. Unlike the GMAT, the EA was built to function as a readiness assessment, which is an assessment of whether you’re ready to tackle the level of work you’ll need to tackle when you get to grad school. The EA is specifically not meant to function as a “the-higher-you-score-the-better” test, which is what the GMAT and the GRE seem to have evolved into (and this is why it’s such a pain to study for those exams).
If you’ve done any research into the EA, you may have heard that most schools are saying they want to see a score of 150+. (The official scoring scale is 100 to 200.) People have complained to me that they can’t find more precise information, such as average scores for each school or percentiles for specific scores—but such averages and percentiles literally don’t exist.
In fact, that’s the point! The EA is very deliberately not the typical type of standardized test that we’re all used to. You don’t have to get a crazy high score in order to be competitive at the top schools. Instead, the EA is used as more of a threshold indicator: Anyone who scores above that school’s threshold is fine (At least, as far as the test is concerned. Obviously, the rest of your application has to be solid!).
Since GMAC doesn’t publish percentiles* and the schools don’t publish average EA scores, nor are EA scores used in school rankings, nobody has to worry that there’s some crazy-high scoring level that you need to hit (and you don’t need to put your entire life on hold for six months to study). You really do just need to get a score—any score—above your desired program’s threshold and you’re done.
* A percentile is essentially a ranking measure: If you score in the 50th percentile on the GMAT, for example, then you scored better than 50% of the people who’ve taken the GMAT in the past 3 years. For the EA, GMAC has released one percentile ranking: A score of 150 is about the 50th percentile. So, basically, if you can hit the 50th percentile or higher on the EA, then you’re done and can concentrate on the rest of your application (and the rest of your life!).
What the Executive Assessment Really Tests
The Executive Assessment (EA) is not a math test. Nor is it a grammar test. Sure, you have to know something (well, a lot of things!) about these topics in order to get a good score. But the Executive Assessment is really testing your executive reasoning skills.
The term might be unfamiliar, but you already have—and use—these skills every day. Here are some examples:
You are faced with a list of 20 unread emails (or, if your inbox is more like mine, about 80). Which ones do you read first? The oldest ones? The ones from your boss? The ones marked urgent? Are there some that you won’t even click on right now because you know, from the sender’s name or from the subject line, that those emails aren’t very important? (And how did that one spam message get through the filter?)
You have a choice between working on Product X or Project Y. Project Y will result in about 5% more revenue to the company, but Project Y will also take 50% longer. Which do you do?
These decisions aren’t easy ones (and would likely require more information than I gave). This complex decision making is exactly what a good executive needs to be able to do well—and this is what the test writers and business schools actually care about.
The math and grammar are primarily used as tools to allow the exam writers to test you on your decision-making ability.
How does that help me take the Executive Assessment?
They don’t expect you to get everything right, any more than a CEO expects to clear everything in his or her inbox today. You have to prioritize.
A great decision-maker has both expertise and experience: She’s thought about how to make various kinds of decisions, and she’s actually practiced and refined these decision-making processes. While the clock is ticking, she doesn’t hesitate to make a decision and move forward, knowing that she’s going to be leaving some opportunities behind.
In order to do that successfully in the business world, you need to know the company’s goals and objectives, and you have to have a good idea of the kind of impact that various tasks or activities will have on the company. You also have to have a lot of practice in making these decisions and observing the outcomes.
The same is true for the EA: If you know how it works, and you know what kinds of trade-offs to think about when deciding how to spend your time, then you can learn how to make the best decisions to maximize your score.
Your goal, then, is to develop a business mindset for this test. You’re not going “back to school” when you study for the EA. Rather, approach the exam as an extension of your current work—this is a test of your business ability and decision-making skills.
The test does include some school subjects in the details of the questions, so you will have to re-learn some actual facts and formulas, but the focus will be on your decision-making skills above all else.
How do I develop a business mindset?
At every step of the way, remind yourself that the EA is primarily a decision-making test. Use this knowledge to help you make appropriate business decisions along the way, during both your studies and the test itself.
For example, don’t try to learn everything that could possibly be tested. Rather, prepare yourself to get a good-enough score. Learn the material that is most likely to be tested, with some extra emphasis on your strengths and your “medium weaknesses”—i.e., the ones that you have a better chance to turn around. On the flip side, de-prioritize your biggest weaknesses—literally get those kinds of problems wrong faster and spend your precious study and test time elsewhere.
Executive Assessment Exam Information
The exam takes 1.5 hours, which is about half the time of either the GMAT or the GRE.
There are three sections on the exam, always given in the following order (for official sample questions of each type, click the links):
Integrated Reasoning (12 problems, 30 minutes)
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- Tests quant and verbal skills together
- Four problem types: Tables, Graphs, Multi-Source Reasoning, Two-Parts
Verbal (14 problems, 30 minutes)
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- Tests grammar and meaning as well as logical reasoning and comprehension
- Three problem types: Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension
Quant (14 problems, 30 minutes)
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- Tests math as well as your ability to reason, or think logically, about quant topics
- Two problem types: Problem Solving, Data Sufficiency
- Does not test most geometry topics (unlike the GMAT and GRE), though it does test coordinate plane topics that are—technically—considered algebra
Each section of the exam is given to you in two panels. For example, the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section has two panels of six problems each. Your first set of six problems will be of mixed difficulty, but probably mostly at a medium level. Within that panel, you can jump around and answer the questions in any order you want. (Do answer them all; there’s no penalty for incorrect answers.)
After you submit your first panel, you’ll get a second panel; the difficulty level will depend upon your performance on the first panel. If you get everything right, your second panel will be quite a bit harder. If you miss every question, your second panel will be quite a bit easier. Most likely, you’ll be somewhere in between those two extremes.
After you do the two IR panels, you’ll start the Verbal section. The level of difficulty in your first Verbal panel (seven problems) will be determined by your performance in the IR section, and your second panel of seven Verbal problems will be determined by your performance on the first Verbal panel.
Quant will work the same way as Verbal (your starting point is determined by IR, and your second panel is determined by your performance on the first Quant panel).
When you’re done, you’ll receive four scores. You’ll receive one score for each of the three sections on an official scale of 0 (low) to 20 (high). The highest practical score for each section, though, appears to be an 18 (If you get every single question correct on one of the official EA practice tests, you’ll score 18 in each section. Why? I’m not sure, but maybe they’re giving themselves room to expand the scoring range in future, if needed).
Those three section scores are then combined to get your Total score on the official 100 to 200 scale. This is done just by adding up the three section scores and then adding 120 to that total, so the practical total score range appears to be 120 to 174. (If you get a 0 in each section, your score will be 0 + 0 + 0 + 120 = 120. If you get an 18 in each section, your score will be 18 + 18 + 18 + 120 = 174.)
As mentioned earlier (and very much unlike the GMAT and GRE), you don’t have to try to max out your score. You just need to beat that school’s threshold—and, as I mentioned, most schools* have set that threshold at a score of 150 overall. If you can score a 10 in each section, that will get you to a 150 overall. (Caveat: As always, check with any particular schools. They could change their standards!)
So this is why I said earlier that, if you have the option to take the EA, there’s a good chance that this test is best one to choose. There are a few other factors to consider when deciding which exam to take—I’ll have another post up soon covering this topic.
* A couple of students have also told me that Wharton has said they’d like to see a score of 11 or 12 on the Quant section.
What kinds of programs accept the EA?
The EA was officially launched for Executive MBA (EMBA) programs, but there has been a huge uptake in the last couple of years and the test is now used for many other types of programs as well.=
Most of the top EMBA programs in the world take the EA, including Booth (UChicago), Columbia, Haas (Berkeley) INSEAD, Kellogg (Northwestern), London Business School, MIT, Wharton, and Yale. You can see a full list of accepting schools here.
In fact, the EA now appears to be the standard for EMBA programs and a growing standard for specialized degrees such as:
- Master of Finance
- Master of Accounting
- Master of Data Analytics
- Healthcare MBA
Interestingly, in the past year or so, a number of part-time MBA programs have begun to accept the EA and some full-time MBA programs have jumped on the bandwagon. In August 2019, Columbia and NYU Stern announced that they will take the EA for their regular full-time MBA program.
Other full-time programs are allowing older applicants, specifically, to take the EA in lieu of the GMAT or GRE—again, in line with the idea that standardized tests for grad school admission should really just be about ensuring that a candidate is ready for the academic rigors of the classroom. Applicants with more extensive work experience have also, by definition, been out of school for a longer period of time, and this circumstance makes studying for an exam like the GMAT particularly onerous.
What else do I need to know about the EA?
* All information in this section is as of November 2019.
Executive Assessment Exam Cost
While the EA is considerably shorter than either the GMAT or the GRE, it does cost more—$350. But you actually get a bunch of perks for that money:
- Very flexible rescheduling: You don’t have to pay any fees to reschedule, as long as you do so online more than 48 hours before your test date.
- Second, all score reports to schools are included in the test fee. You pay more upfront but then you don’t have to worry about paying anything later; you can report to as many schools as you want, whenever you want, for free.
- If you take the test twice, you can choose to share only one set of scores with your schools. (In other words, you don’t have to send your entire scoring record.)
There is one small drawback to the EA compared with other exams: There is a two-test lifetime limit for the EA. According to GMAC, something like 90% of test-takers take the EA just once, so this is not a concern for the vast majority of test-takers. (And this makes sense, since the EA was built as a readiness assessment. You don’t have to worry about trying to hit a crazy-high scoring level; you just need a good-enough score.)
As with the GMAT and GRE, your test scores are valid for 5 years from the date of the exam.
KEEP READING: How to Prep for the Executive Assessment
For information about our Executive Assessment Complete Course click here.
Stacey Koprince is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California. Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests. Check out Stacey’s upcoming GMAT courses here.
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