Asia is the fastest-growing region in the world for GMAT. Not only the number of prospective students shows a huge increase, also Asian business schools have become more attractive.

The number of Asian citizens taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) per year rose 75 percent between 2005 and 2009, more than twice the global increase in GMAT testing volume over the same period. Meanwhile, the number of GMAT score reports sent each year by test takers from around the world to business schools in Asia more than tripled during the past five years.

The GMAT exam is a standardized entrance exam used by more than 4,750 MBA and other graduate management education programmes at nearly 2,000 schools around the world.

Interest in management education is particularly strong in India and China, whose citizens together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the 79,096 GMAT exams taken by Asians during testing year 2009. Indians sat for 30,633 GMAT exams in 2009, up from 13,544 in 2005, and Chinese citizens accounted for 23,550 exams during the year, compared with 8,554 in 2005. Overall, Asians represented 30 percent of the GMAT exams taken globally in 2009, up from a 23 percent share of the worldwide total in 2005.

Institutions across Asia are also attracting a growing share of GMAT score reports, suggesting that prospective students are becoming more interested in attending business school in the region. GMAT test takers directed almost 50,000—or more than 6 percent—of the 801,504 GMAT score reports generated to schools in Asia. By comparison, Asian schools received just 15,000 GMAT score reports in testing year 2005.

Within Asia, India drew the most GMAT score reports in 2009, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China. India and Singapore both saw the number of score reports sent to schools on their shores surge more than 300 percent during the past five years. Still, Asian citizens continue to send most of their score reports to the United States, which remains the world’s most popular destination for GMAT scores. Among the top 10 Asian citizenship groups that took the GMAT in 2009, only Singaporeans sent more score reports to domestic schools than they did to U.S. schools.