The number of testing centers that administer the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) grew to more than 500 this year in response to higher-than-ever demand by test takers from around the globe, according to a recent release from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns the GMAT exam.
The number of testing centers has increased by more than 25 percent since 2006, when Pearson VUE began administering the test for GMAT, GMAC added.
“The need for skilled managers in a global economy is fueling the growth of quality management education programs around the world,” Peg Jobst, executive vice president of GMAC, said in a statement. “Increasing access to the GMAT will provide schools with a bigger pool of candidates to choose from,” she continued.
GMAC has continued adding new testing centersto keep pace with test-taker demand. The number of GMAT test takers reached nearly 267,000 in 2009, the most in any single year in the history of the exam. According the GMAC, the GMAT testing pool is becoming more international and increasingly diverse as it grows. Last year, 51 percent of test takers were non-U.S. citizens, marking the first time since the exam’s creation in 1954 that citizens of nations other than the United States taking the exam outnumbered Americans.
India and China have played a significant role in this diversification of the GMAT test taking pool, GMAC reports. The number of Chinese test takers rose 35 percent in 2009 over the year before, to 23,550, and is up 181 percent since 2005. In India, meanwhile, there were 30,633 GMAT test takers in 2009, up 7 percent over the year before and 128 percent above 2005 levels.
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