Why the GRE and GMAT are More Important Than Ever for MBAs in the Age of AI

From Rowan Hand, SWC's in-house GMAT tutor.

Perhaps irreversibly, we have entered the age of AI. 

It remains to be seen whether this is a good thing. There are a host of issues still: AI’s penchant for hallucination, poor prompting from the human user, a human user’s inclination to cheat or to produce/disseminate disinformation, and, finally, our compulsion to outsource, when possible, even the most basic reasoning faculties.  

But AI continues to evolve every day. Now, there remain relatively few avenues by which one can prove that they’ve produced original work, unassisted by an LLM. And that’s why psychometric exams such as the GRE and GMAT have suddenly taken on vital new meaning in the business school application process.

Here are 3 reasons why the GRE and GMAT are more important than ever in the age of AI:

1. A Realistic Assessment of Reasoning Skill

As a culture, we’re outsourcing more and more of our reasoning to a machine that, if PR hype can be believed, will relieve us of the dull, pesky task of, well, thinking.

However, this glosses over a rather ab initio question: is the reasoning that the machine does actually any good?

In short, there are better and worse ways of thinking. 

There’s a difference between simply completing a job and actually doing a job well. The AI might reason better than the average punter, but that’s not exactly a high bar. My dog can also be trained to paw the keys of the piano, but Rover isn’t starting his LSO residency any time soon. 

GMAT and GRE require that you learn how to think well in order to succeed. The AI might do the thinking for you, but there is no guarantee that it is doing so efficiently or effectively – or even that it’s not lying to you.

Being able to prove that you’re a competent thinker, particularly under pressure, has never been more important than it is now. The GRE and GMAT provide what we otherwise sorely lack today: an excellent reflection of a candidate’s reasoning ability, particularly under pressure. 

As a GRE/GMAT tutor, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with these exams because they seem to be a brutal hoop to have to jump through as part of the business school application process. In fact, my frustration toward these exams has been a perennial motivation for my work helping people succeed on them. 

But in a world where applicants can hire admissions consultants to strongly improve their essays and recommenders might be leaning on AI, the GMAT/GRE are the only avenues where the Adcom can see an unfiltered, authentic view of your ability to think well under pressure, unassisted. 

And it’s crucial to understand that B-schools recognize this ability–not your “prompt engineering skills” – as what will make great leaders of the future.

*There might exist occasional exceptions to this, e.g. group case studies during interview, but these remain few and far between. 

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2. GRE and GMAT are (Secretly) Tests of Grit and Perseverance

It’s important to think about the GRE and GMAT exam sitting as a gestalt: it’s not merely sitting there for a few hours on a given day, but a sum of various factors surrounding the exam, from hours of preparation to stress levels to self-belief and beyond. 

This means grit and perseverance. Except for the lucky few who are naturally good test takers or who have studied a quant and reasoning-heavy field (Physics, Computer Science, Analytic Philosophy, etc.), most test takers experience an uncomfortable reckoning when confronted with the GRE or GMAT.

Each exam requires months of preparation. They are unremitting. For Type A, “I’ve always succeeded at everything I’ve ever tried” people, this will likely land somewhere between psychologically “off-putting” and “devastation.” 

Here is where the exams differ: 

Due to the structure of the GMAT’s scoring algorithm, it is effectively impossible to receive a perfect GMAT score. The GRE is slightly more forgiving insofar as a perfect GRE score is achievable (although still wildly difficult). As you can imagine, this sends hordes of applicants tripping over themselves toward the GRE.* The good news, however, is that reaching a realistic target score on either exam is eminently achievable.

Of late, AI has taught our already-social media-addled attention spans to expect easy, immediate results. But it requires a great deal of psychological wherewithal to treat GRE or GMAT prep as a marathon rather than a sprint, to assume that you will fall down and likely need encouragement during the process, that your time-to-target score might differ from your friends’, and that in the process you’ll likely face more demons than a Tech Bro doing ayahuasca shooters in Iquitos.

But guess what? 

A student’s ability to manage the psychological heaviness of GRE or GMAT prep is a truly excellent indicator of their ability to succeed in an MBA program. Conversely, a student who gives up when the going gets tough is precisely the type of person who’ll be turfed out of the B-school cohort before Christmas break. It would be naive to think schools aren’t looking at GRE and GMAT scores as tests of grit and perseverance. 

*Not that this is a good idea, of course. In reality, applicants almost invariably achieve the same equivalent score on the GRE as they would have achieved on the GMAT. 

3. Buy Low and Sell High on GRE and GMAT

Of course AI is here to stay. 

But the vibe is shifting. We are seeing the first pre-crash tremors, from the acidic reception of GPT-5 or watching a modern LLM get absolutely rinsed at chess by a 1977-model Atari, to people starting to realize that AI writing actually sort of sucks. Obviously B-schools, whose stock in trade is to recruit, train, and send forth the leaders of the next generation, are aware that a good chunk of the AI furore is just hype.

So consider your viability as a business leader for the decades to come rather than quick-fix solutions. B-schools are looking at the long game when they assess applications; grant yourself the same consideration. 

With this in mind, proving that you have skills that do not require the help of the robot will be a clear, undeniable asset to your application. Right now, there is a massive slowdown not only in the number of GMAT/GRE exams being taken but also the amount of tutoring being sought. Anecdotally, this appears to be partly because more and more people think that LLMs can teach them how to take the GMAT/GRE. 

This remains a poor idea–in short, just because the computer can (sometimes) answer the question doesn’t mean its reasoning is any good. Remember, thinking is not the same as thinking well. 

Reader, take note: there will likely be a great number of people who have used AI to study taking the GRE and GMAT. They are about to learn the hard way that AI is not a viable tutor. If you put the same effort in that was considered normal even two years ago, you’ll be light years ahead of such applicants. 

Conclusion 

To paraphrase a classic jibe from The Economist, competence ought to be a given, not an aspiration. Today, it is more an aspiration than ever. 

For you, that means the field is wide open: get some books, get a (good) online course, or hire a GRE or GMAT tutor. Get your score into the competitive range. Life is good at the top, and the top is a lot less crowded than it used to be.

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