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The Graduate Management Admission Council’s (GMAC) Prospective Student Survey is designed to provide valuable information that helps graduate schools enhance their recruitment strategies and programs, as well as attract candidates. We recently spoke with Andrew Walker, Director of Industry Communications at GMAC, about the 2025 Prospective Student Survey—here’s what he had to say.
Vault: What standout findings from the 2025 Prospective Student Survey show why human skills like coachability and emotional intelligence matter more for MBA candidates today?
Walker: The 2025 Prospective Student Survey from GMAC highlights similarities, and some misalignments, about the skills valued by both MBA candidates and their potential employers. We are seeing that in today’s evolving business landscape, technical expertise alone is insufficient. Human-centric abilities are also desired.
Drawing on findings from GMAC’s annual surveys of corporate recruiters and prospective students, both employers and candidates prioritize strategic thinking and problem-solving as top skills for students to learn in business school. However, employers place more emphasis on human skills like emotional intelligence, adaptability, and coachability, recognizing their crucial role in effective leadership and team dynamics.
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), candidates are expressing a greater desire for hands-on experiences and seeking MBA programs that offer real-world experiences like simulations and industry partnerships that help to prepare them for real-world decision-making.
More than half of both candidates and employers say communication skills are important for students to develop in graduate business school. Looking at historical data, these skills typically associated with Graduate Management Education (GME) have long been viewed as among the most important to both candidates and employers alike.
There are greater shares of candidates than employers who find value in skills that may aid their career progression, such as leadership skills, managing human capital, or building their networks and relationships.
How can MBA applicants showcase emotional intelligence effectively in their applications or during job interviews?
GMAC’s 2025 Prospective Student Survey highlights the value of emotional intelligence in business education and the workplace. As employers prioritize human skills like adaptability or initiative, candidates can showcase their personal growth and experience overcoming limitations throughout their career or MBA journey, such as times they navigated team dynamics, resolved conflict, or supported team members and colleagues. By thoughtfully integrating these elements alongside an ability to communicate and think strategically into an MBA application or career interview, candidates are able to effectively convey their emotional intelligence and align with the evolving expectations of business schools and employers.
The survey emphasizes both business/data skills and human skills. How should MBA candidates balance these to boost their career prospects?
The demand for both business/data skills and human skills found in the 2025 GMAC Prospective Student Survey signals that MBA candidates need to strike a strategic balance between technical proficiency and interpersonal effectiveness to stand out in today’s job market. The survey highlights continued candidate interest in skills like data analysis, AI, and business strategy, while employers increasingly value emotional intelligence, adaptability, and coachability. When applying to jobs, it will be beneficial to demonstrate how candidates leveraged both technical skills and human-centered capabilities to solve complex problems and achieve strategic outcomes.
For Vault’s readers considering an MBA, what practical steps would you recommend to develop the skills needed for long-term success?
For those considering an MBA that helps them fulfill their ultimate career aspirations, they should understand how programs can help them develop their strategic thinking and problem-solving skills alongside both technical and human-centric skills. Candidates and employers agree that business school is especially helpful to the development of students’ critical thinking and leadership capabilities. Candidates should also understand the value of human skills that employers are seeking, and that they will also learn in business school. Finally, GMAC’s vision is a world where every talented person can benefit from the best education for them, so candidates considering MBA programs should also be thoughtful about how different opportunities for specialization or flexibility during their studies may help them in their decision-making process.
The ROI of a graduate business program remains the most considered factor and has increased in importance when candidates are researching business schools. What does this shift say about candidates today? And what does it mean for the other more traditional factors that candidates used to consider like rankings?
When candidates decide to pursue an MBA, ROI remains the most important and ultimately deciding factor for their next steps. This showcases that prospective students are increasingly prioritizing tangible outcomes like skills gained and employment opportunities of their graduate management education. GMAC’s 2025 Prospective Student Survey shows that the share of candidates considering ROI in their decision-making has increased as their research about program rankings has decreased. There are growing expectations around candidates' post-GME outcomes and careers as well. This decline in consideration of prestige factors like rankings spans across various demographic groups and geographies, indicating a widespread reevaluation of what constitutes value in business education.
One of the PSS findings indicates that there has been a significant jump in the share of candidates who prefer business master’s degrees. What could be the career implications of this shift and why?
The 2025 GMAC Prospective Student Survey took a closer look at how degree preferences have changed year-over-year, highlighting an overall dip in preference for MBA programs and growth in preference for business master’s degrees. This trend is especially pronounced among younger candidates still in or just finishing their undergraduate degrees, underscoring several important career implications.
First, many specialized master’s programs can be completed in less time than an MBA program and often don’t require prior work experience, offering different entry points into how to connect classroom learning with real-world applications. Additionally, the largest increases in business master’s preference were in the “other business master’s” category, which includes emerging, specialized degrees such as a Master of Sustainability Management or Master of Climate Finance. These programs equip graduates with targeted skills that meet the rapidly evolving industry needs.
These shifts signal that today’s candidates have a wide array of options when choosing between programs that require different levels of work experience and offer various degrees of specialization that can best align with their personal career goals and the demands of today’s job market.
The survey also showed that more people are expressing preference for in-person business education programs, either full-time or part-time in format, reversing a multi-year trend of growing popularity of hybrid and flexible programs since the inception of the pandemic. What does GMAC think is behind this shift and what are the implications for business school graduates entering the workplace?
GMAC’s 2025 Prospective Student Survey found a reversal of the growing popularity of hybrid and flexible learning with hybrid/flexible program preferences dipping back to pre-pandemic levels. Candidates in the 23-24 and 25-30 age groups showed the biggest year-over-year increases in wanting to study full-time and in person, while candidates aged 31+ showed the biggest increase in preferences for part-time, in-person learning. This is perhaps due to many companies requesting their employees to return to office (RTO) after several years of remote and hybrid work following the pandemic. In turn, candidates may be more interested in educational opportunities that also align with the RTO mandate, allowing them to get more comfortable and familiar with their future work environments and equipping them with the much-valued human skills that employers desire.
What is behind the geographic considerations of many business school candidates and how do they tie to their career planning, if at all, according to the 2025 PSS?
According to GMAC’s 2025 Prospective Student Survey, the United States and Western Europe remain the top study destinations, with candidates in India and Greater China increasingly considering programs at home. However, regardless of where candidates look to study, they typically cite the reputation of the education system and preparedness for their career as their top reasons. For those who want to study in less popular international study destinations like Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East, this can often be attributed to the affordability of programs. Interestingly, one-third of global candidates see GME as a pathway to international work and travel, according to the 2025 GMAC Prospective Students Survey. For candidates who are global-minded and wish to study and eventually work abroad, they could seek programs with high global mobility opportunities, such as international internships, study-abroad options, and employer connections in multiple regions to realize their international career dreams.
Andrew Walker is the Director of Industry Communications at the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). Andrew supports GMAC’s commitment to presenting and disseminating actionable and relevant information about graduate management education through authoring reports, white papers, and briefs available on gmac.com and leading presentations, workshops, and panel discussions at industry conferences. Andrew earned a Master of Public Policy and BSFS in International Politics from Georgetown University.
Rob Porter is an editor at Vault.
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