Introduction
The GMAT is a graduate entrance test used by more than 5,900 business programs offered by more than 2,100 universities worldwide. While the test is given in English, it is designed to be as minimally English dependent as necessary to predict successful completion of Business programs taught in English. Further, the test is carefully scrutinized for item bias. Rudner (2012) explains:
Yes, the GMAT test is administered in English and is designed for programs that teach in English. But the required English skill level is much less than what students will need in the classroom. The exam requires just enough English to allow us to adequately and comprehensively assess Verbal reasoning, Quantitative reasoning and Integrated Reasoning skills….
We carefully review our questions using criteria defining good item construction. We also compute statistics to assess whether our questions are appropriate across culture groups. We constantly update guidelines for our item writers, including a master list of terms and phrases to avoid in order to assure cultural fairness. By using carefully defined and thorough item development and review processes, along with statistical analyses to flag questions with possible cultural bias, we have developed a test that minimizes the impact of culture and language. The GMAT exam is the best objective measure of the likelihood of success in management programs across the globe.
Despite the claimed lack of bias and apparent predictive validity of the test, there is substantial global variance in scores. Rudner (2012) attributes this variance largely to differences in native language spoken and to differences in self-selection.
We decided to explore to what extent global differences could be accounted for differences in National IQ. To do this, we examined the relation between measures of national cognitive ability, English language proficiency, English language usage, and GMAT scores by reported citizenship. We also sought to determine to what extent GMAT scores could be used to index the National IQs for poorly investigated regions such as North Korea, Rwanda, and St. Kitts.
