Is a High TOEFL Score a Guarantee of Success in an MBA Program?
By Jane Kenefick, School of Continuing Education, Jan 1 2005 Ask any international student in a competitive MBA program (Is there any other kind?) how he is doing in his classes and chances are he will tell you that his quantitative skills are definitely a match for those of his native-English-speaking peers, but when it comes to classes where communications skills count, he is frequently at a disadvantage. It is one thing to run numbers but quite another to present a persuasive case analysis against an experienced member of the Harvard debating team. Passing the Test of Written English with a five-paragraph essay is not the same as writing a cogent marketing strategy in one thousand words or less. How is the international MBA candidate to compete? Admissions officers in MBA programs know that their international candidates arrive with a quantitative edge but a linguistic disadvantage. They take these differences into account when weighing the merits of one applicant over another. They
