Posted on March 4: DeGroote business students score among the best in North America

Undergraduate commerce students from the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University have scored among the highest business schools in North America in a recent Major Field Test (MFT) conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) with an overall score in the 95th percentile.

“This is wonderful news for our school and clear evidence of the strong teaching culture and quality of curriculum we possess here at DeGroote,” announced Dean Vishwanath Baba. “We aim to prepare all of our students well for the future and that is why we place a great emphasis on developing their knowledge and skills.”

DeGroote administered the MFT test at the end of the fall term 2003. DeGroote's undergraduate students scored an average of 164 out of a possible 200 points placing them in the 95th percentile among 360 undergraduate business programs in North America.

“In addition to our very strong institutional scores, we can also be proud of our extremely high student achievements,” said exam co-ordinator Nick Bontis. “Undergraduate students Christopher Bergs and Jawaid Dossani scored 197 and 196 out of 200 respectively, placing them among the highest scoring students in North America.”

ETS is the largest educational assessment organization in the world and is widely known for the development of its entrance exams such as the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). However, the assessment of university education quality requires the testing of outcomes from graduating students. To address this issue, ETS also administers MFTs for various university programs such as graduating undergraduate commerce students.

The MFT program is an innovative battery of tests that is used by schools and departments at more than 600 colleges and universities globally to measure student academic achievement and growth. Academic departments benefit from the use of the tests as the scores allow for detailed curriculum review, benchmarking and evaluation. Students benefit from the tests by having an effective metric to determine their own level of achievement, comparing their scores with those of other students in the program and with international comparative data.

Further information on the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University can be found at http://www.degroote.mcmaster.ca. Further information on the Major Field Test program administered by the Educational Testing Service can be found at http://www.ets.org/hea/mft/compare.html.