Five Tips from GMAC on Using GMATPrep® v2.2 to Study More Effectively

Submitted by Rebecca Loades, director, New Product Development, Graduate Management Admission Council®

Studying for the GMAT® exam involves making sure you have the basic skills you need, understand the question formats, and know how to pace yourself. The free GMATPrep® software, which includes two computer adaptive practice exams featuring retired GMAT questions, is a key part of any study strategy. It gives you experience taking the exam. Now, the software from the makers of the GMAT exam has been upgraded to help test takers prepare for the exam more efficiently and effectively. (more…)

The GMAT Official Blog Answers Your Questions

We are ready to answer your questions about the GMAT exam. Below are questions we recently answered from students via our social media channels.

Question: Does the GMAT exam have a fixed number of questions which would be asked for each subsection of the Verbal section? Is there a set number of Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning? Is this also the case for Quant? Will there be a fixed number of questions for Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency?

Official GMAT: Every exam includes a fixed number of scored questions of each type. Scored questions are those that count toward your score. However, you may receive a varying number of total questions of each type because pre-test (experimental) questions that do not count are also included in the examination.

Question: Say a candidate is really strong in Critical Reasoning and answers a bunch of 700-800 level CR question correctly. Does this mean the subsequent Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension questions he receives will also be in the 700-800 level? Or is each question type judged independently? Meaning there could be a situation where the candidate receives 700-800 level questions in Critical Reasoning (because he’s strong there) but at the same time he receives 500-600 level questions in Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension because he is weak there?

Updated* Official GMAT: If you’ve taken a practice test, you probably noticed that the question types are not all grouped together. After each question you answer, the computer updates your score to the section and chooses the next question. The difficulty is not tracked separately for question types – it is selected based on your current score. So, if you have 700-800 level CR question, then whether you answer it right or wrong can affect the difficulty of the next question, regardless of whether that next question happens to be Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction, or Reading Comprehension.

Question: On my GMAT exam that I took a couple of months back I scored a 50 in the quant section. On my official score report my quant percentile was reported as 92%. However on the latest percentile rankings, I’ve noticed that a quant score of 50 now corresponds to a percentile of 90% . Right now if I send my score reports to schools , what will my quant percentile be?

Official GMAT: Congratulations on your GMAT score! You did really well! To answer your question, the percentile ranking charts are updated in January with the most recent percentile rankings. Schools will typically refer to the most recent percentile ranking chart, regardless of when you sent your scores. I hope that helps!

Have a question about the GMAT exam? Ask us in the comments below. Or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Beat the GMAT, GMATClub or PaGalGuy!

Study Smart for Your Best GMAT

How can you best prepare for the GMAT® exam? The answer to that is as simple and straightforward as it is unique to you. There are no magic formulas, tricks, or “one size fits all” answers—just planning, preparation, and devoting sufficient time to becoming familiar with the exam.

We can’t tell you how much time you should spend studying for the GMAT exam, but we can tell you how much time other people have spent preparing to take the exam. Using data collected last year from more than 8,000 GMAT test takers, we can see that 49% of test takers spend at least 51 hours prepping for the exam, and those who do better on the GMAT tend to spend more time studying for it.

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GMAT® Study Products Update

I’m scheduled to take the Next Generation GMAT exam in June 2012, how do I prepare for this exam?

Test takers often wonder how best to prepare for the GMAT exam. This is especially true with the launch with the Next Generation GMAT exam on June 5, 2012.  Our earlier blog posts have discussed the relevance of Integrated Reasoning, provided student perspectives, and even provided tips from our Chief Psychometrician on how to tackle Integrated Reasoning on the exam.  This post will discuss some of the test preparation products that we have developed to help you prepare for the Next Generation GMAT.  While there is no single preparation method that is best for everyone, GMAC offers several study products to help you no matter what your approach.
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