GMAT Scores and Performance: Selecting Students into a Graduate Management School

Research shows that scores on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) are positively correlated with academic performance at graduate management schools. This study replicates this finding on Australian data and extends the analysis to cover performance at the individual course level as well as for aggregate grade point average. This traditional treatment of the data while directed at the admission decision is in fact structured to explain variance in performance. A novel analysis is presented in parallel which investigates the trade–off between Type I errors (rejecting a student who would pass) and Type II errors (accepting a student who fails). This reveals that, while GMAT may be a good predictor of performance, it is an inefficient discriminator for selection purposes.