Everything You Need to Know About the Executive Assessment (EA) Test for MBA and EMBA

The Executive Assessment (EA) is a standardized test designed specifically for experienced professionals applying to Executive MBA (EMBA) programs. Unlike the GMAT or GRE, which are often required for full-time MBA programs, the EA focuses on real-world business scenarios and data analysis, making it relevant to seasoned professionals who already have strong business acumen and advanced skills.

What is the Executive Assessment (EA) Test?

The EA is a computer-based, multiple-choice test that measures your quantitative, verbal, and integrated reasoning skills. Like the GMAT, it was developed by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) and is accepted by over 200 business schools worldwide as an alternative to the GMAT or GRE.

The EA gives test takers a section score and a total score which weighs each section equally. Executive Assessment scores range from 100 to 200. A good EA score lies between 150-155, and a score of over 155 will help you stand out as a strong candidate at most top business schools.

Executive Assessment Test format and structure

The EA is a 90-minute test that consists of three sections:

Integrated Reasoning (IR): This section assesses your ability to analyze and interpret information from multiple sources, including graphs, charts, and text (12 questions).

Verbal Reasoning (VR): This section evaluates your reading comprehension, critical thinking, and ability to analyze arguments (14 questions).

Quantitative Reasoning (QR): This section tests your mathematical skills and ability to solve quantitative problems (14 questions).

Who should take the Executive Assessment Test?

The EA is designed for experienced professionals with at least 8 years of full-time work experience and a strong desire to advance their careers through an EMBA program. If you have a solid foundation in business concepts and are confident in your analytical and problem-solving skills, the EA may be a good fit for you.

Seasoned professionals (read: older applicants) often prefer the EA as it offers them convenience and flexibility. The EA can be taken online or at a designated center. Preparation isn’t as intensive as the GMAT and the test includes easy rescheduling options. As long as you reschedule 48 hours before your test date, you will not be charged a fee. Your test fee also includes all score resorts, unlike the GMAT, where you only get 5 free score reports within 48 hours of your score being live. If you take the EA more than once, you can also choose which score you want to send to your target school.

GMAT vs the Executive Assessment

	GMAT (Focus)	Executive Assessment
Eligible for	Most business schools	Most business schools offering EMBA programs
Validity	5 years	5 years
Lifetime limit to number of tests	8	2 (testing center) + 2 (online)
Fees	USD 275  (Test Center) or USD 300 (Online)	USD 350
Length of test	2 hours 15 minutes	1 hour 30 minutes
Sections	Quantitative Reasoning Verbal Reasoning Data Insights	Verbal Reasoning Quantitative Reasoning  Integrated Reasoning (IR)
Score range	205 - 805	100 - 200
Average score for intended Business/MBA graduates	553.35	N/A
What it tests	Critical thinking and reasoning skills	Critical thinking, logic, data analysis, academic readiness

Is the Executive Assessment Test easier than the GMAT?

While the EA is shorter than the GMAT and requires less prep, this is not to say that it is the easier test! Here’s what our in-house GMAT tutor Rowan Hand has to say:

The EA is designed to require less prep time, so read that for what it’s worth. Some people say it makes it easier, and some others say that it makes it harder. The EA also retains sentence correction and integrated reasoning, which the new GMAT Focus has removed in its verbal section. So from the perspective of requiring less prep work to take the test, the EA could be seen as easier than the GMAT.

There’s not really a great score conversion between the EA and the GMAT. The cohorts that take each test are extremely different, with the EA being taken mainly by Executive MBA applicants. If you rank the percentiles, then what is passing as a good EA is probably a bit lower than what passes as a good GMAT score, but you have to consider the cohort. So it’s not necessarily a solid comparison to be making! For a lot of EMBA programs, the level of prep work is lower, but that’s a function of being ‘executive’; people already have a career behind them. It’s best to not take the relative percentiles seriously and try to find which score on the EA is equivalent to the same score on the GMAT. For both tests, the higher the better!

Also note that the GMAT quant and verbal sections are adaptive at the question level while the EA is adaptive at the module level. This means that in the EA, if you perform well in one module in a section, the next will be harder. For the GMAT, if you answer a question correctly, the next question will be more difficult.

In the EA, you can review and skip questions in your current module before moving to the next, making it easy to check and edit your answers.

Ultimately, the best way to determine which test is right for you is to take practice tests for both and compare your results.

Does the Executive Assessment Test have more weightage on the admissions results than the GMAT for EMBA applicants?

From GMAT tutor Rowan Hand: The EA essentially measures the same things that the GMAT is measuring. The GMAT typically requires more preparation and as it was designed specifically for business schools, it generally offers a better idea of a candidate’s ability to perform under pressure.

That may be true for MBAs, but for EMBA, it doesn’t make that much of a difference. If someone prefers to take the GMAT and scores highly, maybe it gives them an edge. But if the school is accepting the EA, they take it for what it’s worth! They’re expecting mostly EA scores, so it won’t have more weight than the GMAT.

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We can offer diagnostic tests that will help you predict which test you’ll score more highly on. Book a chat with our in-house GMAT/GRE tutor, Rowan Hand.