MBA Readiness Self-Assessment Template (Scored, 10 Domains)

MBA Readiness Self-Assessment: [Your name, programme and start date]

A scored self-assessment of readiness for the first-year MBA core across ten domains: quantitative skills, Excel, accounting, finance, economics, statistics, writing, speaking in class, teamwork and career clarity. It combines self-ratings with 18 short diagnostic questions and evidence checklists, computes a score per domain and an overall readiness index, flags domains where confidence runs ahead of performance, and maps every gap to a pre-MBA primer and a number of study hours. It is for admitted students before day one, applicants deciding when to apply, and anyone planning pre-MBA preparation. Source basis: the competencies that business-school accreditation standards expect programmes to build (analytical and quantitative reasoning, communication, teamwork, ethical and global perspective, technology and data), summarised in our own words, and published research on self-assessment and learning (Kruger and Dunning 1999; Dunlosky et al. 2013). The diagnostic questions are original. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example. This is a self-study aid, not an admissions assessment or advice.

Document control

Contents

• 1. Purpose and how the assessment works
• 2. Rules for taking it
• 3. Part A: self-ratings
• 4. Part B: diagnostic questions
• 5. Part C: evidence checklists
• 6. Scoring
• 7. Worked example
• 8. Gap map to pre-MBA primers
• 9. My action plan
• 10. Quality checklist
• 11. Common mistakes
• 12. Self-test

1. Purpose and how the assessment works

The first term of a leading MBA programme moves fast: financial accounting, corporate finance, statistics, microeconomics, strategy and leadership often run in parallel, with cases to prepare every night and team deliverables every week. Students who arrive with a gap in accounting or Excel spend their first weeks catching up while classmates start recruiting and building relationships. Most of that catching up can be done before day one, if you know where the gaps are.

Self-assessment alone is not reliable for this. People with the least skill in an area often overestimate it most, because the skill needed to perform is also the skill needed to judge performance (Kruger and Dunning 1999). This template therefore pairs each self-rating with an objective measure: short diagnostic questions for the six knowledge domains, and evidence you can point to for the four behavioural domains. The difference between the two is itself a result: a large positive gap means "check this, you may be more confident than prepared".

2. Rules for taking it

1. Do Part A first and do not change the ratings afterwards.
2. In Part B, use only a basic calculator and, where a question says so, a spreadsheet. No notes, search engines or AI assistants.
3. Mark a question wrong if you guessed, even if the guess was right. A lucky guess is not readiness.
4. In Part C, tick an item only if you could show the evidence to someone else (a file, an email, a named situation).
5. Record the time you took. If you needed much longer than 40 minutes for Part B, note it: speed matters in a case class and in exams.

3. Part A: self-ratings

Scale: 1 = not at all true, 2 = slightly true, 3 = moderately true, 4 = mostly true, 5 = completely true.

4. Part B: diagnostic questions

Quant (calculator allowed)

• Q1. Solve $3x - 7 = 2x + 5$.
• Q2. A price rises by 20% and then falls by 20%. What is the net percentage change?
• Q3. USD 1,000 is invested at 6% a year, compounded annually. What is it worth after 3 years (to the cent)?

Excel (spreadsheet allowed)

• Q4. A2:A4 hold 2, 3 and 4; B2:B4 hold 10, 20 and 30. What does =SUMPRODUCT(A2:A4,B2:B4) return?
• Q5. A tax rate is in B1. You write a formula in C2 that multiplies A2 by the tax rate and copy it down to C10. Which formula keeps pointing at the tax rate? (a) =A2*B1 (b) =A2*$B$1 (c) =$A$2*B1 (d) =A$2*B1
• Q6. Cell A1 contains 0.125 and is formatted as a percentage with no decimals, so it shows 13%. What does =A1*100 return?

Accounting

• Q7. A retailer buys inventory of USD 500 on credit. Which balance sheet lines change, and by how much? What happens to equity?
• Q8. Revenue USD 1,000, cost of goods sold USD 600, operating expenses USD 250, interest USD 30, tax rate 25%. What is net income?
• Q9. Equipment costs USD 10,000, has a salvage value of USD 1,000 and a useful life of 3 years. What is the annual straight-line depreciation?

Finance (calculator allowed)

• Q10. What is the present value of USD 1,100 received in one year at a discount rate of 10%?
• Q11. A project costs USD 1,000 today and returns USD 600 at the end of each of the next two years. At 10%, what is its net present value (to the cent)?
• Q12. Market interest rates rise. What happens to the price of an existing fixed-rate bond, and why?

Economics

• Q13. A 10% price increase cuts the quantity sold by 15%. What is the price elasticity of demand, is demand elastic or inelastic, and does revenue rise or fall?
• Q14. A company has spent USD 50,000 on a feasibility study for a new store. Should that amount affect the decision to open the store? Why?
• Q15. You leave a job paying USD 90,000 a year after tax for a one-year programme with tuition of USD 80,000. Ignoring living costs you would have anyway, what is the economic cost of the year?

Statistics

• Q16. For the data 2, 4, 4, 5, 15: what are the mean and the median, and which better describes a typical value?
• Q17. For a normal distribution, roughly what share of values lie within two standard deviations of the mean?
• Q18. Across stores, advertising spend and sales have a correlation of 0.8. Which statement is justified? (a) Advertising causes sales to rise. (b) Stores with higher advertising spend tend to have higher sales. (c) 80% of sales are due to advertising. (d) Cutting advertising will reduce sales by 80%.

5. Part C: evidence checklists

6. Scoring

For each domain $d$:

$S_d = \frac{\bar{r}_d - 1}{4} \times 100$

$O_d = \frac{c_d}{n_d} \times 100$

$D_d = w_d\, S_d + (1 - w_d)\, O_d$

$G_d = S_d - O_d \qquad R = \frac{1}{10} \sum_{d=1}^{10} D_d$

The knowledge domains put more weight on the diagnostic because it is a direct test; the behavioural domains weight self-rating and evidence equally because the evidence list is shorter and coarser.

Bands. 75 or more: Ready (maintain with light practice). 50 to 74.9: Refresh (targeted review). Below 50: Priority (work through the primer before the programme starts).

Excel set-up (one row per domain, ratings in B to D, correct or ticked in E, number of items in F, weight in G):

7. Worked example

Amara Okafor (fictional) is an engineer with five years in operations at a logistics company, admitted to a full-time programme starting in August. Her baseline attempt:

Two checks of the arithmetic. Excel: mean rating $(4+3+4)/3 = 3.667$, so $S = (3.667 - 1)/4 \times 100 = 66.7$; one of three correct gives $O = 33.3$; $D = 0.4 \times 66.7 + 0.6 \times 33.3 = 46.7$. Speaking: $S = 33.3$, $O = 25.0$, $D = 0.5 \times 33.3 + 0.5 \times 25.0 = 29.2$.

Reading the result. Amara's overall index of 56.6 says "refresh", but the overall number matters less than the profile. Her priority order is Speaking in class (29.2), Accounting (33.3), Career clarity (41.7) and Excel (46.7). Excel carries the only overconfidence flag: she uses spreadsheets daily, but missed the absolute reference and the display-versus-value questions, the two errors that most often break a finance model. Quant and Statistics show the opposite pattern (she knows more than she thinks), which is common for engineers and means she can spend less time there.

Hours. A simple rule allocates 20 hours to each Priority domain, 10 to each Refresh domain and 2 to each Ready domain. Amara has 4, 4 and 2 domains in those bands: $4 \times 20 + 4 \times 10 + 2 \times 2 = 124$ hours, about 10.3 hours a week over 12 weeks. In Excel: =COUNTIF(K2:K11,"Priority")*20+COUNTIF(K2:K11,"Refresh")*10+COUNTIF(K2:K11,"Ready")*2.

8. Gap map to pre-MBA primers

The whole preparation period is planned in mba/pre-mba-roadmap-12-weeks; this assessment decides what goes into it.

9. My action plan

Re-assessment record.

When you re-take Part B, write new questions of the same type or use the primers' self-tests: answering the same 18 questions again measures memory of the answers, not readiness.

10. Quality checklist

• Part A completed before Part B, and not changed afterwards
• Part B done without notes, search or AI tools; guesses marked wrong
• Part C ticked only where evidence exists
• Scores computed with the formulas, weights unchanged after seeing results
• Every domain with a calibration gap above 25 has an extra check
• Every Priority and Refresh domain has a primer, a first action and a due date
• Hours fit into the weeks before the programme starts
• Re-assessment dates in the calendar
• Result discussed with a mentor, second-year student or study partner

11. Common mistakes

1. Rating yourself after seeing the diagnostic, which removes the calibration check.
2. Counting lucky guesses as correct.
3. Reading the overall index and ignoring the profile of domains.
4. Skipping a domain because of high self-rating while the diagnostic says otherwise.
5. Over-preparing strengths (often Quant for engineers) because it feels comfortable.
6. Leaving behavioural domains, especially speaking in class and career clarity, for "after the programme starts", when the first weeks are the busiest.
7. Treating the bands as admissions verdicts. They are a study plan, not a judgement of fitness for the programme.
8. Re-taking the same 18 questions and taking the higher score as progress.
9. Changing the weights after scoring to make a result look better.
10. Planning more hours than the calendar allows, then abandoning the plan.

12. Self-test

1. Why does the assessment pair each self-rating with an objective measure?
2. A domain has ratings 3, 3, 4 and 2 of 3 diagnostic questions correct. What is its domain score?
3. A domain has a self score of 75 and an objective score of 33.3. What does the flag say and what should you do?
4. Why do the knowledge domains weight the diagnostic more heavily than the self-rating?
5. Why should a re-assessment use new questions?

Sources and further reading

• Kruger, J. and Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.
• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J. and Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.
• AACSB International. Global Standards for Business Education (2026), for the competencies business schools are expected to develop: https://www.aacsb.edu (check the current text).
• OpenStax. Principles of Accounting, Principles of Economics and Introductory Statistics (free; CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 by title), named as further reading.

Answer key

Part B diagnostic (computed in calc/mba-readiness-self-assessment.py).

• Q1. $x = 12$.
• Q2. A 4% fall: $1.2 \times 0.8 = 0.96$. Excel: =1.2*0.8-1 gives -4%.
• Q3. USD 1,191.02. Excel: =FV(6%,3,0,-1000) or =1000*1.06^3.
• Q4. 200 ($2 \times 10 + 3 \times 20 + 4 \times 30$).
• Q5. (b) =A2*$B$1. The dollar signs fix the column and row of the tax rate while A2 moves down.
• Q6. 12.5. Formatting changes the display, not the stored value.
• Q7. Inventory up USD 500 and accounts payable up USD 500; equity unchanged (no revenue or expense yet).
• Q8. USD 90: operating profit 1,000 - 600 - 250 = 150; less interest 30 gives 120 before tax; tax 30; net income 90. Excel: =(1000-600-250-30)*(1-25%).
• Q9. USD 3,000 a year. Excel: =SLN(10000,1000,3).
• Q10. USD 1,000. Excel: =PV(10%,1,0,-1100).
• Q11. USD 41.32. Excel: =NPV(10%,600,600)-1000 (NPV discounts from the end of year 1, so the initial outlay is added outside the function).
• Q12. The price falls: the bond's fixed coupons are now less attractive than new bonds, so its future cash flows are discounted at a higher rate.
• Q13. Elasticity $-15\% / 10\% = -1.5$; demand is elastic (absolute value above 1), so revenue falls. With a price of 100 and 1,000 units, revenue goes from 100,000 to $110 \times 850 = 93{,}500$, a fall of 6.5%.
• Q14. No. It is a sunk cost: it has been spent whatever is decided. Only future costs and benefits that differ between the options matter.
• Q15. USD 170,000: the forgone salary (opportunity cost) of 90,000 plus tuition of 80,000.
• Q16. Mean 6, median 4. The median better describes a typical value because 15 is an outlier.
• Q17. About 95% (95.45% exactly). Excel: =NORM.S.DIST(2,TRUE)-NORM.S.DIST(-2,TRUE).
• Q18. (b). Correlation shows association, not causation, and 0.8 is not a share of sales.

Part C, writing item. One possible rewrite: "We recommend that the company consider cutting prices." (8 words.)

Self-test.

1. Because self-ratings are least accurate where skill is lowest (Kruger and Dunning 1999); the objective measure corrects this and the difference shows where confidence is miscalibrated.
2. Self score $(3.333 - 1)/4 \times 100 = 58.3$; objective 66.7; domain score $0.4 \times 58.3 + 0.6 \times 66.7 = 63.3$ (Refresh).
3. The gap is 41.7, above 25, so the flag is "Overconfidence check": test the domain again with new questions before deciding to skip it.
4. A test answer is direct evidence of the skill; a rating is an opinion about it.
5. Repeating the same questions measures memory of the answers, not improvement in the skill.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with the competency areas that business-school accreditation standards ask programmes to develop (as described in the AACSB Global Standards for Business Education, 2026), summarised in original wording, and with published research on self-assessment and effective learning. The scoring method, weights, bands and diagnostic questions are original to this template and are not an official or validated instrument of any school or accreditor; this template is not affiliated with or endorsed by AACSB or any programme. People and results in the example are fictional. This template is original text written for this collection. Template licence: MIT.