What This Episode Covers
The Executive Assessment is a shorter alternative to the GMAT®, built for executive MBA programs and specialty masters. Isaac walks through who accepts it (executive MBA programs, masters in finance, accounting, data analytics, and healthcare MBAs, plus a growing set of full-time and part-time programs) and the core decision rule: if your target program accepts both the EA and the GMAT®, the EA is usually the smarter pick, because it's shorter, easier to prepare for, and draws on the same underlying skills.
Then comes the format, which is where the EA differs from the GMAT® most. Three 30-minute sections in a fixed order: Integrated Reasoning (12 questions), Verbal (14 questions across reading comprehension, sentence correction, and critical reasoning), and Quant (14 questions across problem solving and data sufficiency). There's less geometry than the GMAT®, though coordinate plane geometry can still show up. The bigger structural difference is the panel system: each section runs in two halves, your performance on the first panel sets the difficulty of the second, and you can move freely among questions within a panel.
That structure drives the strategy. Isaac recommends a two-pass approach through each panel: find the getable questions first and invest the time to get them right, then spend remaining time on the rest. There's no guessing penalty, so you always answer. On scoring, the EA is a threshold exam rather than a competition: schools want to see you clear their bar, then they look at the rest of your application. Isaac also covers the practical policies worth planning around, including unlimited score reports, free rescheduling up to 48 hours before the test, and a two-attempts lifetime limit that makes a solid study plan matter that much more.
Key Takeaways
If your program accepts the EA, it's usually the smarter pick. It's shorter, easier to prepare for, and the content overlaps heavily with the GMAT®. Acceptance varies by program, so check with your target schools first.
The panel system rewards a two-pass strategy. Your first-panel performance sets the difficulty of the second, and you can move freely within a panel. Skim all the questions, bank the getable ones, then come back for the rest.
Always answer. The EA has no guessing penalty, so a blank never helps you. Mark something for every question, even if you haven't had time to work it deeply.
The EA is a threshold exam, not a competition. Schools generally want to see you clear their bar rather than outscore other applicants. Once you're over it, your career progression, essays, and interview do the differentiating. That tends to make test day a lot less stressful.
Plan around the rescheduling policy. Free rescheduling up to 48 hours out, plus a two-attempts lifetime limit (as of this episode), means honest self-assessment in the final week is part of a good study plan, not a fallback.
Related Reading
- Executive Assessment Study Plan: How to Prepare for the EA
- GMAT® vs. GRE® vs. Executive Assessment: Which Should You Take?
Transcript
Read the full transcript
Welcome to the GMAT® Strategy Podcast. You're here because you believe there's a better way to study for the GMAT®, and so do I. I created the GMAT® Strategy to maximize your results and minimize your efforts so you can get to the fun parts about business school and life as quickly as possible.
My name is Isaac Puglia, and I've been teaching GMAT® classes and tutoring privately for the GMAT® for over six years, and I personally have achieved a 99th percentile score on an official GMAT® exam and helped hundreds of students get into the business schools of their choice.
I'm excited to be a part of your MBA journey, since I think the world can benefit from the best possible business leaders that we can find. And if this show is bringing you value, please share it with your friends and family who are studying for the GMAT® so that together we can make this process as easy and painless for as many people as we possibly can. Let's go.
Today I'd like to give you some advice about the Executive Assessment. The Executive Assessment is essentially a shorter version of the GMAT® that will help you apply to certain types of MBA programs, but it's not, as of today, accepted at all MBA programs, and that's an important distinction.
Right now, when we're in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, you cannot currently take the Executive Assessment, just like you can't currently take the GMAT® in many markets. The digital version of the GMAT® is supposed to be coming mid-April, and they've set online that digital registrations for at-home versions of the Executive Assessment should be coming at the end of April, so it's going to be a little bit longer before you can register for an Executive Assessment at home.
The good news is I have read that the Executive Assessment will be offered on both Macintosh-based Apple operating systems and Windows-based operating systems, so hopefully what I said in last week's episode will not be true of the digital GMAT®, and you will be able to take the at-home GMAT (all GMATs are digital) on a Windows-based machine and a Macintosh-based machine. We still don't know for sure yet, but that does bode well, since it's likely the Executive Assessment will operate on both platforms.
It may be a month until you can register for the Executive Assessment, but now would be a great time to start studying if you haven't yet started. And if you are studying, then you probably want to continue your studies, so hopefully today's episode will be very valuable for you.
What types of programs accept the Executive Assessment? It's good for executive MBA programs. It's good for masters in finance programs, masters in accounting, masters in data analytics, and healthcare MBAs. Interestingly, some full-time and part-time MBA programs are accepting the Executive Assessment in lieu of the GMAT®.
The punchline here: if the program you want to apply to accepts the Executive Assessment and accepts the GMAT®, then you want to take the Executive Assessment, because it's much shorter, it's easier to prepare for, and it's a little bit easier to take. I'll get into the intricacies of that in a moment, but the main takeaway is you should check in with your target program, because if they accept the Executive Assessment, you should do that.
In terms of the format of the Executive Assessment, you're going to start with an Integrated Reasoning section, and unlike the GMAT®, you can't decide the order in which you want to take the exam. You're going to have 30 minutes for 12 questions. If you want some advice about general Integrated Reasoning strategy, then listen to my podcast on Integrated Reasoning. I think it's episode three or four, some of the early episodes.
After that, you'll have a 30-minute verbal section, which is 14 questions. Those 14 questions are the same three types as the regular GMAT®: reading comprehension, sentence correction, and critical reasoning. If you're not familiar with those, go back and listen to my respective podcasts on those question types.
Then you'll have a 30-minute quant section, which will also have 14 questions, and that's a combination, just like the real GMAT®, of problem solving and data sufficiency questions. If you want more advice on those, I have podcasts on those as well.
The math and verbal content is essentially identical, except that there is much less geometry on the quantitative portion of the Executive Assessment. However, there can be some questions on coordinate plane geometry, so you should be prepared to answer those.
Here's where the main differences lie, other than just raw length. The Executive Assessment is much shorter, but one of the important differences is that the test does not adapt to difficulty on a question-by-question basis like it does on the GMAT®. On the GMAT®, if you answer a question, you cannot go back and change your answer. You're committing to that answer forever in the moment.
On the Executive Assessment, each section is given in what they call panels, which is basically halves: one section of seven questions and another section of seven questions. Your performance on the first seven questions will dictate the difficulty level of the next seven questions, the back half of the section. (Unless it's IR, in which case the first panel is six questions and the second panel is six questions, for a total of 12.)
Within each panel, you can move around the questions freely, so you can skip questions and then come back to them later. That's very different than the GMAT®, so your strategy should be a little bit different when it comes to taking those sections.
What you want is a simple two passes through each panel. You're going to look at all six or seven questions and try to find the easiest, most getable ones for you, and invest as much time as you need to get those right. Then, with any remaining time, you want to try to get as many of the harder questions as you can. And you always want to guess, because there is no guessing penalty. Always mark an answer. Never leave anything blank, even if you don't end up having time to dive deep on each individual question within each panel.
At the end of the test, you'll get scores for each section, out of 20, and then your total score is going to be the sum of those scores plus 120. The interesting thing about this, scoring-wise, is that most schools don't really care about getting an ultra-high score on the Executive Assessment. It's really just a readiness exam. What that means is they just want to see you pass a certain threshold, which is another reason the Executive Assessment is preferable to the GMAT®.
The GMAT® is very much the type of test where you're trying to outscore a lot of your competition. On the Executive Assessment, that's less important. As long as you meet the school's minimum threshold or exceed it, they're basically going to be happy to look at the rest of your application. You're not duking it out with other applicants to see who got the highest Executive Assessment score, which is kind of nice. I think that makes it a lot less stressful.
It is more expensive to take the Executive Assessment than the regular GMAT®. It costs $350 as of now. The at-home GMAT® is going to be less expensive than the regular one, but I haven't seen any price announcements on that, so it's possible the at-home Executive Assessment will be a little bit less. For now, you should plan for it to be more expensive than the regular GMAT®.
But you do get a lot of benefits for that extra cost, such as unlimited score reports at any time, which is not true of the GMAT® (you have to pay for extra score reports after test day). You get free rescheduling up to 48 hours in advance of your test, which is extremely valuable. And you can also choose the best scores to send out of whichever performances you take. As far as I know, that's full performances, so you can't take your best IR score and your best math score and your best verbal score and combine that into a super score. But if you take the test twice, you can choose to only send the higher score if you want.
There's a big limitation with the Executive Assessment that you don't have quite to the same degree on the GMAT®, which is you can only take the Executive Assessment two times ever in your entire life. So it's much more important to make sure you have a very solid study plan and strong practice exams leading up to your official test, and to make sure you definitely reschedule if you're not feeling good or if you're not able to rest and recuperate the week leading up to your exam. If you're having a very stressful week, you want to capitalize on that unlimited reschedule policy, which is really, really generous.
With the GMAT®, you can take the test up to eight times in your lifetime, and I would strongly recommend taking it as few times as you can. But most people are going to take the GMAT® an average of two or three times, just because it's such a difficult exam and there are a lot of variables on any given day. That is very much an outscoring-the-competition type of exam, so you want to try to get the best score you're humanly capable of in the time constraints you have. The Executive Assessment is a little different: you're just trying to cross a threshold for the school, and then you're happy.
If you want preparation resources for the Executive Assessment, most of the question resources and practice tests you're going to find at MBA.com. But Manhattan Prep does have an Executive Assessment class. I haven't personally taken it and I don't have personal experience with it, but because of the quality standards Manhattan Prep has (I'm very familiar with them, since I worked at Manhattan Prep for about five years), I would definitely recommend their class if you want a more structured approach to your learning.
Their books are extremely good. I've recommended those in other episodes of the podcast. Most reputable GMAT® classes will help you tremendously with the raw material of the Executive Assessment. Just keep in mind that the timing strategy and the question-answering strategy is going to be radically different for the Executive Assessment than it is for the GMAT®, but the content instruction you'll get from most in-person and digital classes is going to be extremely valuable.
Now, the GMAT® Strategy's digital class is not designed to help with the Executive Assessment, but some of the strategies in that class, if you're really struggling with getting your verbal techniques to apply to the questions (you feel like you know all the verbal content but you're not getting it to come through in the score), the review techniques I teach in the GMAT® Strategy could help you. Feel free to try out that class, and if you're not happy with it, just let me know and I will refund your money, no problem, if it's within 30 days.
If you want more advice on the Executive Assessment, Stacey Koprince has written some great blog articles on the Manhattan Prep site that are very worth checking out. She was a colleague of mine when I worked at Manhattan Prep, and in fact I trained with her when I was training to be an instructor there. I also used a lot of her written materials when I was preparing for the GMAT® myself back in the day, so she's a very trustworthy source. If you type into a web search "Manhattan Prep blog Executive Assessment," those articles should come up.
Of course, if you have other questions, feel free to reach out to me. I'm on Instagram at The GMAT® Strategy, on Reddit at slash-the-GMAT®-Strategy, and on Facebook at slash-the-GMAT®-Strategy, if you prefer.
As always, my greatest hope is that this content will make your studies as easy and as painless as they can possibly be. If you'd like more tips and strategies for optimizing your performance specifically on the GMAT®, head to thegmatstrategy.com or click the link in the description of this podcast, and check out my video presentation on how to achieve your dream score in half the normal time and with half the normal effort.
In the meantime, this is a weekly show, so please subscribe, and stay positive and stay consistent with your studies. I'll talk to you soon.