Introduction

The GMAT stands for the Graduate Management Admission Test and is a standardized exam that over 1,900 business schools require for admission. The GMAT tests a variety of skills, such as analytical ability, critical reasoning and reading comprehension, that are critical to success in business school and is used as a predictive indicator of your performance in business school. The GMAT is owned by the Graduate Management Admission Council, GMAC, and is administered at Pearson VUE test centers.

The GMAT is administered in English and is a CAT, a Computer Adaptive Test. The difficulty of the questions changes depending on your performance on previous questions. If you are doing well, the difficulty of the questions will increase rapidly. Likewise if you are not doing well, the difficulty of the questions will decrease. Your performance on the questions is used to calculate a percentile ranking that business schools can use to gauge your performance relative to others in a uniform fashion. Unlike an undergraduate GPA, which can fluctuate depending on the school and major and is difficult to compare, the GMAT allows schools to rank you fairly against other candidates.

The GMAT consists of 3 sections, the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the Quantitative Section, and the Verbal Section. Your GMAT score consists of an overall score ranging from 200 to 800, and two sub scores, the Quantitative score, ranging from 8 to 51, and the Verbal score, ranging from 8 to 51. The AWA consists of two essays and is graded on a scale of 0 - 6 in 0.5 increments. The Quantitative and Verbal scores are factored into your overall score out of 800, the AWA is a separate score and does not influence your overall score out of 800. Each score also correlates to a percentile ranking, and allows schools to gauge your performance in the various sections against other candidates.

The GMAT is a standardized test. This means that you are given a percentile-based scoring, indicating your performance relative to others. For example, if you score 650, you would be in the 80th percentile and would have outperformed 80% of test takers. Likewise if you score a 540, you would only have scored a 50th percentile, and have scored in the top half of all test takers. GMAT scores can be compared directly; if a test writer scores higher, then that test writer performed better.

The GMAT is strictly timed. You are allotted 75 minutes each for the Quantitative and Verbal sections, and 30 minutes for each AWA Essay. In total the GMAT takes nearly 4 hours, and you are only allowed 2 breaks of 8 minutes each. There is an strict percentile deduction penalty for leaving questions unanswered on the GMAT— always be sure answer every question, even resorting to guessing if you are running out of time.

The GMAT is written by over 300,000 business school aspirants worldwide yearly. Your score is valid for 5 years, and you can write any day of the year. You must wait at least 30 days if you wish to rewrite, and approximately 30% of test writers end up writing the GMAT multiple times. The GMAT currently costs $250 USD.

Many people underestimate the GMAT. Despite the simplicity of the Mathematical concepts tested, the GMAT is very challenging because of the analytical ability required to do well. Furthermore, given the self-selecting population that writes the GMAT— virtually every test writer is a University graduate— it is an extremely competitive exam. It takes approximately 3 - 6 months to prepare for and 200 - 300+ hours of preparation to attain a competitive score. The median score is 540— a 50th percentile, meaning that half of all test writers score 540 or below. A 600 is a 66th percentile (1 in 3), a 650 an 80th (1 in 5), a 700 a 90th (1 in 10), and a 760 99th percentile (1 in 100). An 800 is a perfect score, and only approximately 30 (1 in 10,000) test writers a year score 800. Furthermore, if you score 800, you are banned from writing the GMAT for a period of 5 years.

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