Knowing the structure of the test is an important step in preparing for it.

What is an adaptive test?

Adaptiveness applies only to the quantitative and verbal sections of the GMAT.

This is how it works — the GMAT test software has access to a huge repository of questions and each question has a difficulty level associated with it. The software selects a test with medium difficulty to start with. The candidates provide their answers to the questions. You cannot skip any question. The test software scores your answer and uses the accuracy of the answer to decide the difficulty level of the next question. Each question thus gets selected on the basis of the accuracy of the responses to the previous questions and candidates should realise the importance of every question in the test.

Parts of the whole

The GMAT, which is overall a four-hour test, has three parts:

• Analytical writing assessment — this involves writing two essays in 30 minutes each
• Quantitative section — answering 37 maths questions in 75 minutes
• Verbal section — answering 41 English questions in 75 minutes.

All the questions in the second and third sections are multiple choice questions with five options each.

There is an optional eightminute break between each of the three sections.

No skipping questions

In direct contrast to the CAT, where candidates are trained to only answer those questions that they are completely confident about, the GMAT does not offer candidates the luxury of picking and choosing the questions.

Each question has to be answered and until one answers the question, the test software will not move on to the next question.

No going back

The other impact of this adaptive methodology is that students cannot go back to a previous question after answering it and moving on to the subsequent questions.

Consider a candidate who chose ‘B’ as an answer to question number 25 in the mathematics section. Let us assume that the correct answer was, in fact, ‘E’. Upon receiving a confirmation for ‘B’, the test software evaluates it, realises that the response is inaccurate and uses this piece of information to decide the next question. While working on question number 26, if the candidate realises that the answer to the previous questions was choice ‘E’, there is nothing that he or she can do about it.

Accuracy is essential in the GMAT because you get only one chance at attempting a question.

No selecting the order of questions

Questions are issued one after the other without giving candidates the option to retract to previous questions.

In CAT, if you are more comfortable with reading comprehension, you can attempt all those questions before answering the other questions.

GMAT does not allow this. Questions cannot be answered in any random order, but only in the order they are asked in.

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4) 3000 and Plus Indian B-Schools will Accept GMAT Score

Source: HTEducation

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