Not everyone is good at taking tests. Especially when you feel as if your entire career is resting on the results of four hours spent in an airless room with dozens of other people who look cool, calm and collected while you're sweating through everything you're wearing.
You might be a whiz at problem-solving and logical reasoning, but your vision fogs at the sight of a multiple choice test, and you over-think the answers to questions you'd otherwise know. You start imagining that maybe passing out and being carried from the room on a stretcher would be less humiliating than getting a score of 300.
The business world is full of situations where you have to think on your feet and come to sound judgments on the spot, but they don't generally involve doing algebra in your head. Except in life-or-death emergencies that involve explosive fires or missile launch codes, you can usually say "wait a second" and revise or modify your decision.
So what does the GMAT really test besides your ability to take a test? It's designed as a measure of how well you'll do in graduate business classes as well as how well you might do in an advanced business environment. However, if you've already proved yourself with work experience or have an advanced degree in a field other than business, there are a number of highly-ranked schools where you can be admitted with a GMAT waiver for an MBA in a traditional setting or online where you can study on your own while staying at your current job.
If you're unsure of what you'd be getting with an online vs traditional course of study, here's what you should know:
The Courses
While coursework may be laid out differently at different schools, there's no variance in the subject matter of classroom and online courses offered in any one particular school. Usually the same instructors teach identical curricula both online and in the classroom.
Most online programs provide an overall course outline of each subject but only allow access for students to study content modules on a weekly or other basis. These modules typically contain reading and essay assignments and tests, as well as special projects and, in some cases, participation in discussion boards.
Most tests are designed with the understanding that students will have access to their study material, and while tests are not monitored, they're often timed.
The Resources
With university libraries and a vast cache of research available online, there's no limit to the resources available to a student who isn't on campus. Required books and study material would generally be the same for online and traditional students.
The Class Scheduling
Most online MBA programs are offered asynchronously, which is another way of saying that students are not required to log in on a specified day or at any particular time to access the coursework as long as it falls within the time frame of the study module. As opposed to synchronous programs requiring that everyone who's enrolled is online doing the same work simultaneously, this kind of scheduling allows students to do the work when they're best able, whether it's before or after work, during lunch or on the weekend.
In addition, because there's no commuting involved, an online student also has more time to devote to actual coursework instead of spending that time finding a parking spot on campus.
The Interaction With Others
As you might imagine, an area where online degree programs don't compare equally to study in a campus setting is in offering regular and casual face-to-face interaction with the instructor and the other students. However, many instructors offer video conferencing, and there are also discussion boards and other means of connecting with peers. In addition, recognizing that students can live half a continent away from the college campus, some universities have satellite facilities in different cities that offer in-person guest lectures and opportunities for local participants to get together.
The Results
Surveys have shown that with the same instructor and the same materials, there is little to no difference in how online and traditional students perceive the course relative to how much they learned or how well they did on exams.
