2012 Global Management Education Graduate Survey. Survey Report
Author: Leach, Laura
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Business Administration Education,Graduate Students,Student Surveys,Graduates,Global Approach,Graduate Surveys,Student Attitudes,Value Judgment,Graduate Study,Job Search Methods,Institutional Characteristics,Reputation,Leadership Qualities,Manufacturing,Foreign Countries

Each year for the past 13 years, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has conducted a survey of graduate management education students in their final year of business school. The Global Management Education Graduate Survey is distributed to students at participating schools. The survey allows students to express their opinions about their educational experience, including the value of their degree, their job search efforts, and their prospective career plans. GMAC developed this survey to provide school administrators with information to help gauge whether students' needs are being met, what services students value most, and which services might yet present challenges and require market-wide improvements. It is hoped that student responses to the wide-ranging topics presented here will serve administrators by helping them improve services, tailor programs to match student needs, and foster learning environments that allow students to benefit from their graduate business experience. Graduates can review these survey results to see how their opinions, preferences, and personal experiences at school and in the job market compare with those of their peers. This survey collected responses from 6,292 graduate management students at 136 business schools worldwide in February and March of 2012. Responses from the 5,366 recent or soon-to-be graduates of these schools form the basis of this report. Responses from the remaining 926 graduate management students who indicated they would be graduating in 2013 were collected in the study and are supplied in the benchmark reports that their respective schools receive as a benefit of survey participation. This survey continues to expand its global reach: 2,642 (52%) of the 2012 survey respondents were citizens of countries other than the United States and 40 percent of respondents were attending schools outside of the United  States. Key findings include: (1) More than 9 out of 10 graduating students continue to report outstanding, excellent, or good value and quality with their graduate management education; (2) Overall, 62 percent of job seekers in the class of 2012 had an offer of employment at the time of the survey; (3) Online websites and social media are some of the most frequently used resources when searching for a job, but produce the lowest success rate in yielding a job offer; (4) Class of 2012 graduates who received a job offer through an internship received a salary increase from pre-degree earnings (84%) that exceeded the increase received by others who had a job offer (70%); (5) Consistent with past years, the most popular industries for graduates searching for a job in 2012 were products and services (23%), consulting (20%), and finance and accounting (18%); (6) Students seeking jobs in the manufacturing sector had the greatest success rate (76%) in landing a job offer, and graduated with one of the lowest levels of student debt (54%); (7) Four out of 5 graduating students felt their degree gave them a competitive advantage and prepared them for today's job market; (8) Sixty-one percent of graduating students, on average, expect to demonstrate leadership qualities more often than managerial qualities in their future job; (9) Although more than half (59%) of graduating students report they expect to have some debt after graduation (a median of US$45,000), there is no correlation between the expectation of having debt and students' assessment of the quality, reputation, and value of their graduate management program; and (10) Asked for the first time what factors or qualities define a school's reputation, class of 2012 graduates rated program standards, mission, talent level of fellow students, networking opportunities with classmates, and relevance of curriculum as the top five drivers of school reputation. (Contains 7 tables, 22 figures and 21 footnotes.)