188 Change and challenges aside, schools say they are not expecting a drop in applications. “The classic situation is that when certain sectors go down people look to sharpen their skills,” says Baczko. In fact, many have seen an increase this year as the economy stumbled. A survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council, an association of graduate business schools around the world, shows that 77 percent of full-time MBA programs reported an increase in applications in 2008, the highest in five years. In the testing year ending June 30, 2008, the GMAT, the standardized test used to get into MBA programs, was administered 246,957 times, the highest ever, according to GMAC. The second highest year the test was administered was in 2002, the time of the last downturn. Some, however, are seeing signs of a shift away from business schools. Lisa Jacobson, CEO of Inspirica, a high-end, one-on-one test preparation firm says many of her students are changing plans and opting for law school, which happened during other slumps. The joke is they’ll be busy doing bankruptcy work, she says. “This younger generation has never really seen a bad economy," says Jacobson, "To them it’s really scary.”
Villanova School of Business 2008 Media Report