New GMAC data shows U.S. business schools are losing ground with global candidates as prospective students demand proof of ROI over promises of transformation
Every year, the GMAC Prospective Students Survey confirms some things the graduate management education world already suspected and complicates a few others. This year’s edition – based on responses from 4,253 candidates across 145 countries throughout 2025 – lands closer to the complicated end of the spectrum.
Here are five findings bound to raise some eyebrows.
For years, the technology sector has been a magnet for ambitious young people considering graduate business school. That pull appears to be weakening – at least among the youngest candidates in the pipeline.
Among prospective business students 22 and younger, interest in post-graduate tech careers has dropped to just 24%, down from 43% in 2019. That’s a 19-point collapse over six years among the cohort that will define the B-school applicant pool of the late 2020s. Among 23- to 24-year-olds, the decline is similarly pronounced.
Where is that interest going? Finance. The same cohort of candidates 22 and younger now reports 54% interest in financial services careers, up from roughly 30% in 2019. Interest in investment banking and asset management among this group has climbed to 42%, compared to around 21% six years ago.
Ironically, candidates aged 25-39 are actually more interested in technology careers than they were in 2019, even after two years of prominent layoffs and industry turbulence. The oldest candidates in the pipeline are leaning into tech while the youngest are walking away from it. GMAC’s qualitative research on Gen Z candidates points to an emphasis on financial security and career stability as the explanation – and right now, a lot of them apparently think they’ll find it on Wall Street rather than in Silicon Valley.
Since they were invented by Businessweek Editor John Byrne in 1988, program rankings have been a central currency of the B-school marketplace. Candidates researched them obsessively. Schools competed furiously to move up in them. Publications built entire business models around them. And for some, the temptation to cheat the system was too great.
But the landscape may be shifting. Among full-time MBA candidates, GMAC finds, interest in researching program rankings has seen a statistically significant decline since 2023 – at the same time that research into ROI and career outcomes has climbed to the top of the list. The same pattern holds for non-MBA business master’s candidates.
Rankings haven’t become irrelevant. But the data suggests that a growing share of candidates are doing their homework differently – leading with “what happens to your graduates” rather than “where do you sit in the U.S. News table.” For schools that have invested heavily in rankings-focused marketing, that’s a signal worth taking seriously. For schools that have historically punched below their weight in the rankings game but can demonstrate strong placement outcomes, it may be an opening.
In 2025, 79% of male candidates globally preferred full-time, in-person study, versus 67% of female candidates – a 12-point gap that is the largest recorded in the survey’s history, dating back to at least 2019.
Women were actually a key driver behind the global resurgence in in-person learning preference from 2023 to 2024. But from 2024 to 2025, women’s preference for full-time in-person learning dipped while men’s continued to grow – widening the gap to its current record level.
GMAC’s report points to structural factors – caregiving responsibilities, familial obligations, and the spillover effects of return-to-office mandates that research shows disproportionately push women out of the workforce. In other words, the gap may reflect not what women want but what their lives currently make viable. For schools whose program portfolios skew heavily toward full-time, residential formats, this is a quiet but meaningful access problem.
Ask most people why they decided to pursue an MBA or business master’s degree, and they’ll give you a tidy answer about career goals or skill gaps. What the GMAC data suggests is that the real trigger is often considerably more social – and that this has changed meaningfully since before the pandemic.
Compared to 2019, candidates in 2025 are significantly more likely to say their application plans were prompted by parents, friends, or professors. Twenty percent of candidates – one in five – reported that their friends’ plans to pursue a graduate degree influenced their own decision to explore business school. And critically, this wasn’t just a young-candidate phenomenon: the growth in social influence as a trigger occurred across every age cohort.
This has real implications for how schools think about recruitment. Alumni and student ambassadors have always been important. But the data now makes a specific case for targeting parents – particularly for younger candidates – and faculty, who are especially influential for candidates still in their undergraduate programs. Word-of-mouth is not a soft marketing strategy. For a growing share of the candidate pool, it’s the primary on-ramp.
The GMAC survey cross-references candidate skill development priorities against employer hiring priorities from the separate GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey – and the gaps are more revealing than the alignments.
Yes, both groups agree that strategic thinking and problem-solving top the list. But move down the rankings and the divergence becomes significant. Candidates place much higher value than employers on developing global business skills, cross-cultural competence, and human capital management. They appear to view these as hallmarks of a well-rounded business education.
Employers, meanwhile, are focused on something candidates appear to systemically underestimate: the human stuff. Coachability, emotional intelligence, and initiative all rank considerably higher with employers than with candidates. The coachability gap is the starkest – 38% of employers rate it a top priority for business school to develop, versus just 23% of candidates. On initiative, 44% of employers versus 31% of candidates.
The candidates coming out of business school who struggle in their first roles often don’t struggle because they can’t build a financial model or run a strategy framework, GMAC data suggest: They struggle because they push back on feedback, misread relationships, or wait to be told what to do. That gap starts forming before candidates even set foot in a classroom – and B-schools have both an opportunity and an obligation to close it.
GMAC’s 2026 Prospective Students Report is available here.
DON’T MISS GMAC’S BLUNTEST SURVEY YET: U.S. LOSING GLOBAL TALENT; CANDIDATES WANT PROOF NOT PROMISES
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