IDENTIFIERS *Graduate Management Admission Test

Essays for the Graduate Management Admissions Test must be written with a word processor (except in some foreign countries). The test sponsors, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, believed that this is fair because some word processing skill is a prerequisite for advanced management education. Furthermore, it might also be unfair to require students who routinely use word processors to shift to paper and pencil just for a testing situation. The current study addressed the comparability of scores from handwritten and word-processed essays using a sample of 3,470 examinees who had written essays in both formats. Both the computer and paper-and-pencil versions contained two 30-minute essays questions, one asking for an analysis of an issue and the other analyzing the reasoning of a presented argument. Results indicate that scores were higher on the handwritten essays than on the word-processed essays, and that this difference did not interact with gender, ethnic, o