The Executive Assessment (EA) has become another entrance exam option–on top of the usual suspects of the GMAT and GRE–for business school admissions. It’s designed specifically for experienced professionals.
The exam is short, consisting of three 30 minute sections:
- Integrated Reasoning;
- Verbal Reasoning;
- Quantitative Reasoning.
It evaluates the skills that business professionals use in their employment and will require to complete their business school program.
Which Business Schools Accept the Executive Assessment?
In the chart below, we identify which full-time MBA programs accept which test–the EA, GMAT, GRE and other options.
td style=”padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #cccccc; height: 18px; width: 36.0656%;”>
| School | Executive Assessment | GMAT | GRE | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASU W.P. Carey | X | X | ||
| Babson Olin | X | X | ||
| Bath School of Management | X | |||
| Berkeley Haas | X | X | ||
| Boston Carroll | X | X | ||
| Brigham Young Marriott | X | X | ||
| Cambridge Judge | X | X | X | |
| Carnegie Mellon Tepper | X | X | ||
| CEIBS | X | X | CEIBS Admissions Test | |
| Chicago Booth | X | X | ||
| Columbia Business School | X | X | X | |
| Cornell Johnson | X | X | ||
| Dartmouth Tuck | X | X | ||
| Duke Fuqua | X | X | X | |
| Edinburgh | X | |||
| emlyon | X | X | Tage Mage | |
| Emory Goizueta | X | X | ||
| Esade | X | X | ||
| ESCP | X | X | Tage Mage or equivalent | |
| ESMT Berlin | X | X | X | ESMT Business Admissions Test |
| Florida Warrington | X | X | ||
| Georgetown McDonough | X | X | X | |
| Georgia Tech Scheller | X | X | ||
| Georgia Terry | X | X | X | |
| Harvard Business School | X | X | ||
| HEC Paris | X | X | X | |
| IE Business School | X | X | IE Global Admissions Test | |
| IESE | X | X | ||
| IMD | X | X | ||
| Imperial College | X | X | ||
| Indiana Kelley | X | X | ||
| INSEAD | X | X | ||
| ISB | X | X | ||
| Johns Hopkins Carey | X | X | ||
| London Business School | X | X | ||
| Manchester AMBS | X | X | ||
| Michigan State Broad | X | X | ||
| Michigan Ross | X | X | MCAT, LSAT, PCAT or DAT | |
| Minnesota Carlson | X | X | ||
| MIT Sloan | X | X | ||
| Northwestern Kellogg | X | X | ||
| Notre Dame Mendoza | X | X | ||
| NYU Stern | X | X | X | MCAT, LSAT or DAT |
| Ohio State Fisher | X | X | ||
| Oxford Saïd | X | X | ||
| Rice Business | X | X | X | |
| SMU Cox | X | X | ||
| Rochester Simon | X | X | X | |
| Stanford GSB | X | X | ||
| Toronto Rotman | X | X | ||
| UCLA Anderson | X | X | X | |
| UC Irvine Merage | X | X | ||
| UNC Kenan-Flagler | X | X | X | Strong EA, LSAT, PCAT or MCAT scores can meet GRE/GMAT waiver conditions |
| USC Marshall | X | X | ||
| UT Austin McCombs | X | X | X | |
| UVA Darden | X | X | X | MCAT, LSAT |
| U. Washington Foster | X | X | ||
| Vanderbilt Owen | X | X | X | |
| WashU Olin | X | X | ||
| Wharton | X | X | ||
| Yale School of Management | X | X |
Looking at Scores: Averages and Standout Marks
The Executive Assessment is made up of three sections: Integrated Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Quantitative Reasoning.
Each of these three sections is scored out of 20 points. In addition to the number of questions you answer correctly, this score is based on the difficulty level of those questions, as well as the number of questions that you answer.
These three scores are then combined with 120 to reach your total (or “cumulative”) score.
There is less information available on what common and good EA scores are than for the GMAT and GRE exams. However, rough averages seem to hover around the 150 mark, and top business schools may look for Executive Assessment scores that exceed 155.
There are a few programs that have shared data on average EA scores. These include:
- Chicago Booth, whose 2021 incoming class had an Executive Assessment average score of 154.
- Vanderbilt Owen, who reported an average EA score of 151.
- Wharton, whose 2024 EMBA incoming class had a median EA score of 156.
How to Prepare for the Executive Assessment
As with most of the exams you will take across your academic and professional career, the secret to gaining a good score on the Executive Assessment comes down to preparation. Good preparatory effort will leave you able to easily recall relevant subject matter, familiar with test structure and strategy, and comfortable with time management in the exam.
To assist with preparation, many candidates opt for official practice resources. MBA.com, for example, offers several. These include:
- Official Practice Questions: 300 practice questions (100 for each section) with full answer explanations.
- Official Practice Assessments: Two full length, adaptive assessments which use the same scoring algorithm as the real Executive Assessment.
- Official Practice IR Questions: 50 Integrated Reasoning questions, complete with answer explanations.
Outside of subject content, there are a few extra parts of the Executive Assessment for which you should prepare. For example, you will need to decide whether to take the EA online or in person; to practice your timings for each section; and to familiarize yourself with the exam-day set up, whether that be equipping a room in your house or practicing the commute to the assessment location.
When preparing for the Executive Assessment, it makes sense to look at each of the three sections separately first in order to understand their requirements. MBA.com recommends approaching each section with the following strategy:
Quantitative Reasoning:
Take the time to review the most commonly included topics, which include:
- Absolute Value
- Systems of Equations
- Algebraic Translations
- Divisibility and Prime Factorization
- Percentages, Percentage Change, and Interest
Verbal Reasoning, Reading Comprehension:
Practice summarizing each paragraph that you read in your own words to ensure you have correctly comprehended it. This works best with official test prep paragraphs, but can also be done with any technical writing.
Verbal Reasoning, Sentence Correction:
Familiarize yourself with grammar rules and their application. MBA.com names specific rules that are commonly tested, such as:
- Subject-Verb Agreement
- Pronoun Agreement
- Parallelism
- Comparisons
- Idioms
Integrated Reasoning:
Preparing for the Integrated Reasoning section works best with the official question banks. This section tests:
- Your ability to read and use the XY scatterplots and sortable tables in the exam
- A combination of the skills you use in the quantitative and verbal sections
The last bit of preparation you’ll need to do for the Executive Assessment is to register for the exam. You can do this up to 24 hours before an available testing window.
How Does the Executive Assessment Differ from the GMAT or GRE?
The Executive Assessment measures the skills and knowledge of experienced professionals. We can divide the differences between the Executive Assessment, GMAT, and GRE into four categories: structure and scoring; business school acceptance; quantitative; and verbal.
Structure and scoring
The Executive Assessment is shorter than either the GRE or the GMAT, taking just 90 minutes to complete.
Like the GRE, sections in the EA must be completed in a fixed order; both differ from the GMAT, in which candidates can choose the order in which they answer questions.
The scores differ between each test, too. The score ranges for each are as follows:
- GRE: The Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections are scored between 130 and 170. The Analytical Writing section is evaluated on a 6-point scale.
- GMAT: The latest GMAT is scored between 205-805.
- Executive Assessment: The score scale for each section is from 0 to 20. The total score scale ranges from 100 to 200.
There is also less emphasis on percentile rankings on the Executive Assessment than there is on the GMAT. According to Manhattan Review, this is due to the fact that all scores above a certain threshold on the EA indicate candidate readiness for an MBA program.
Acceptance
The number of business schools and MBA programs that accept each type of examination varies.
For example, over 7,700 programs at more than 2,400 business schools accept the GMAT. Over 1,300 business schools accept the GRE. More than 250 programs across 100 business schools accept the Executive Assessment.
Quantitative
Despite the fact that the GRE has more questions that tackle geometry than the GMAT, it is considered the least challenging of the two exams when it comes to math. The EA has fewer challenging concepts still, even though it covered the same topics as the GMAT.
Verbal
Both the EA and the GMAT focus their verbal sections on grammar, whereas the GRE focuses on vocabulary.
Who Was the Executive Assessment Originally Designed For?
The GMAC designed the Executive Assessment to suit experienced professionals who are looking to enroll in further education. The exam is an alternative to the GMAT or GRE and is usually used by candidates applying to Executive MBA (EMBA) programs.
The idea behind the executive assessment is that it would take less time to prepare for—and to take—than the GMAT or GRE, thus increasing suitability for busy working professionals.
This is where the threshold scoring system that we mentioned earlier comes in. GMAC designed the EA to demonstrate candidates analytical abilities and suitability for the course, rather than to provide a rigidly scored system like the GMAT or GRE. As well as proving ability to schools, it indicates to incoming EMBA candidates the areas on which they might like to focus before their program.
