Harvard Gets Down to Business

Think Harvard's business school is just a bunch of stuffy suits with rigid laws and impenetrable doors?

Think again.

HBS recently announced that it will begin taking GRE scores along with GMAT scores for consideration of acceptance into its illustrious programs. Now if that's not flexibility, I don't know what is.

Most applicants headed to graduate school, whether they're going into education, math, engineering, sociology, or a plethora of other fields, take the GRE, the graduate record examination. In the past, the GMAT, the Graduate Management Admission Test, has been the test exclusively reserved for grad applicants headed to business school. And business schools just wouldn't accept the GRE under any circumstances.

So what gives? Why the change?

HBS states that both tests will give a reliable view of an applicant's ability to perform in their MBA programs, and since both measure Verbal Reasoning, Analytical Writing, and Quantitative Reasoning, that makes perfect sense to me. The scores are similar, too.

Maybe the rest of the country's schools should follow Harvard's lead and allow applicants the flexibility to choose the test better suited for them.

After all, high-schoolers get to choose between the ACT and the SAT; shouldn't our grad students be able to do the same?