The fastest-growing segment of bachelor’s degree holders applying to MBA programs is former business majors who reached 54% percent in 2010. Former business majors taking the GMAT increased an average of 5.3 percent each year, a rate at least twice as fast as any other major. GMAT test takers are seen as a gauge of who is applying to graduate business school.
But schools don't like business majors in many cases. The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business as well as Harvard Business School and Oxford’s Saïd Business School, report that they have accepted more engineers in recent years.
Engineering graduates are, and have been, the second-largest group of undergraduate majors interested in applying to MBA programs. But as a portion of GMAT test takers, they’ve become increasingly scarce. Engineers taking the test grew an average of 0.6 percent each year from 2006 to 2010—more than four times slower than test takers overall.
