By Alex Sevilla

Executive MBA programs are feeling the squeeze from all sides: The economic crisis brings pressure to fill high-tuition seats, even as less employer support translates to fewer potential students. The expansion of MBA options means 35-year-olds who would have been EMBA candidates in the past have had more chances to earn their MBA years earlier through a part-time or a professional program. And some of the remaining executives may just feel they’re beyond taking an admission test.

All of which may make it tempting for executive MBA programs to forgo the GMAT requirement. Although I would never question another school’s evaluation metrics, I know our experience at the University of Florida has taught us that using the GMAT in EMBA admissions actually helps us continue to thrive, even in a tough market.

For an intense, rigorous, and quantitatively focused program like ours, we do ourselves and our students a disservice if we bring in people who can’t do the work. If someone doesn’t have the quant chops — particularly at the executive level — it can get messy quickly inside the classroom. The student may lean too heavily on their teammates for help, and in some cases, put pressure on instructors or the program itself to ease up on the rigor or the coursework. It is never easy to tell an EMBA student that he or she is not making the grade.

With our executive set, we certainly look very hard at work and managerial experience, career progression, leadership, and fit, among many factors. But our research and experience back up what GMAC validity studies have consistently shown: that Total, Verbal, and particularly Quantitative GMAT scores are a strong predictor of performance in EMBA programs. The average student in our EMBA program is 38, with 12-14 years of managerial experience, so the correlation between undergraduate GPA and program success can be hard to assess based on how long ago the degree was, what major, and what school. The GMAT helps show us how quickly someone can jump back in and swim.

Another factor to consider is the brand equity of your EMBA degree and how that relates to your overall program, college, and university reputation. Whether we like it or not, there is a stigma that some executive programs are MBA-lite. Not requiring the GMAT of your executive MBA candidates while you require it of your full-time MBA candidates can play into that thinking, and it can lead to a diminishing brand that affects your other MBA portfolio options. For us, requiring the GMAT is a signal of quality: We give you the same diploma that our full-time students get, you are going to have to work just as hard for it, and you’re going to have to take the same admission test.