The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has reduced the duration of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) by half an hour. This change will take effect from April 16, 2018 onwards.
The council has streamlined two longer sections of the test– quantitative and verbal reasoning, by reducing the number of unscored, research questions in these sections.
This change has come about as a result of their ongoing market feedback and operational reviews which suggested the opportunity to shorten the exam, without changing its reliability.
Vineet Chhabra, Senior Director of product management for GMAC, said that they believe students will be less anxious and will be able to perform better.
He stated that, “Several tutorial and instruction screens that test-takers see at the test centre have also been simplified. There are no changes to the exam’s analytical writing or integrated reasoning sections. The scoring algorithm will be the same, the total score and individual quant and verbal section scores will be comparable to the exams taken prior to this change.”