A Study Questioning the GMAT Ironically Proves to be a Great Resource to Practice GMAT Critical Reasoning Flaw Questions... Maybe you heard about (or read) a recent story in the Washington Post entitled: Are business schools graduating the wrong leaders? If so, the GMAT may be to blame I love this piece because the study (at least as it is presented in the article) is jam-packed with critical reasoning flaws you can use to sharpen your GMAT Critical Reasoning skills. So, let's continue our multi-part special. In this installment, we will take a look at how this article deals with a very important concept in GMAT Critical Reasoning and the AWA essay: Causality. GMAT Critical Reasoning avidly tests your ability to understand how causal arguments work. All causal arguments assume that there is no alternative cause. This article is assuming that the GMAT is the cause of lower volumes of entrepreneurs at the top of graduating classes without considering other likely causes. Take a look: "Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) results are an important assessment criterion for business-school applications. The higher the GMAT score, the better the odds of gaining admission. A study in the Journal of Business Ethics makes the surprising finding that high GMAT scores may be inversely correlated with entrepreneurship. The findings on uncertainty avoidance and safety-first behavior suggest that the GMAT works against entrepreneurial activity. People who do well in business schools are less likely to take the risks to become entrepreneurs." So let's get this straight. Because people who get higher GMAT scores are more likely to get in top schools and because people who do well in business school are less likely to be entrepreneurs, the GMAT is the reason why? If this were a GMAT Critical Reasoning Weaken question, you would explore what you might find in a correct answer:
- In the reasoning of the study, we actually don't know how many people wanted to become entrepreneurs in the first place. For all we know, even more people may decide to become entrepreneurs after they start business school than before. For example, let's say only 5% of top MBA graduates seek to become entrepreneurs at graduation, but what if only 3% of people who take the GMAT and apply to business schools in the first place were interested in entrepreneurship?
- Another aspect the study seems to ignore is that perhaps as business school students learn more about what it takes to create a successful enterprise they realize that they may have been unaware of substantial flaws and risks in their entrepreneurial plans. So perhaps the percentage is lower because some aspiring entrepreneurs realized that those shortcomings in their plans could have resulted in failure. Thus, the pain, hardship, and suffering associated with a business failure could have been averted altogether because of their MBA education.