GRE vs GMAT: Which Should You Take for Business School?

The Current State of Both Exams

The GMAT was redesigned in 2023 into the "GMAT Focus Edition" — shorter (2 hours 15 minutes across three sections: Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights), scored on a scale of 205-805, and with less emphasis on grammar and more on data interpretation than the previous version. The GRE, administered by ETS, covers Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and Analytical Writing, and is scored in two separate scaled scores of 130-170 each.

As of 2024, virtually every top business school globally accepts both the GRE and the GMAT. Harvard Business School, Wharton, INSEAD, LBS, and nearly every other program on the Financial Times ranking list accept either. The idea that the GMAT is the "business school exam" while the GRE is only for academic programs is outdated.

Which Test Suits Nigerian Applicants Better

Nigerian students typically have a stronger foundation in the quantitative components of both exams, given the mathematics emphasis in WAEC/NECO curricula and Nigerian secondary education generally. The verbal sections — particularly the GRE's vocabulary-heavy Verbal Reasoning and the GMAT's Data Insights section — are where the performance gap between Nigerian applicants and North American or European applicants tends to be widest.

On balance, most Nigerian applicants find the GRE's verbal section more predictable to prepare for than the GMAT's — the GRE's vocabulary focus (Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence) can be studied systematically, while the GMAT's Critical Reasoning questions require a different kind of logical thinking that Nigerian students with less exposure to LSAT-style argumentation sometimes find less intuitive initially.

Preparation Time and Resources

ETS (GRE) provides free official preparation materials through its website, including two full-length practice tests. Manhattan Prep and Magoosh offer strong third-party preparation courses for both exams. Realistic preparation time for a Nigerian student targeting a score above the 80th percentile — the range that makes you competitive at top programs — is three to four months of serious, consistent study (two to three hours per day).

The GMAT Official Prep materials, available through mba.com, are the most realistic for GMAT preparation since the questions are retired actual exam questions. Third-party GMAT materials vary considerably in quality.

The Strategic Consideration

If you already know you want to apply to a small number of specific programs, check each program's reported score range for admitted students. This is usually available on the admissions statistics page of each school's website. If a program shows median GMAT scores but not GRE scores — or vice versa — that tells you which exam their admitted students predominantly take, which may indirectly indicate which test the admissions committee is more comfortable evaluating.

For students who are genuinely undecided between an MBA and a master's in a non-business field, the GRE is the stronger choice purely for flexibility — it is accepted at virtually all business schools and is required or accepted at nearly all other graduate programs.

Registration in Nigeria

Both exams can be taken at test centres in Lagos and Abuja. The GRE is administered by Prometric; the GMAT by Pearson VUE. Both can also be taken as at-home versions with remote proctoring, though some Nigerian applicants report technical difficulties with the at-home option due to internet stability. Scheduling should be done at least 6-8 weeks in advance, particularly for in-person slots at the Lagos centres, which fill up quickly around peak testing periods (September through December).