We utilize a longitudinal survey of registrants for the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) to estimate the economic returns to an MBA. The GMAT exam, an admissions requirement for most MBA programs, is similar to the SAT for undergraduates without the competition from the ACT. The survey, sponsored by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), was administered in four waves, beginning in 1990 and ending in 1998. 14 In addition, survey responses were linked to GMAC’s registration and test data, which includes personal background information and GMAT scores. The initial sample size surveyed in wave 1 was 7006, of which 5602 actually took the test. We focus our.
