Students aspiring to pursue graduate management programs in universities of the United States must take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). Most business schools in the United States use the scores obtained by prospective students in GMAT to short-list and select the right candidates. GMAT is a Computer-Adaptive standardized test, which means that the test automatically adjusts itself to the ability level of the examinee and every student’s test will be unique.

GMAT assesses a student’s aptitude to do well academically in a graduate business school. GMAT is delivered to the student via a computer at GMAT centers across the world on a date selected by the student. The test takes around 4 hours to complete. Students must note that each of the three sections in GMAT have a time limit within which they must be completed.

GMAT consists of three sections: Analytical Writing Assessment, the Quantitative section, and the Verbal section, with Analytical Writing Assessment being the first section that students must attempt followed by the Quantitative section and the Verbal Ability section respectively.

The Analytical Writing Assessment requires students to write two types of essays – one in which the student must analyze an argument and the second in which the student must analyze an issue. Each essay must be completed in 30 minutes and is rated on a scale of 0-6.

Students can take an optional break following the Analytical Writing Assessment section and then proceed to answer the Quantitative Section, which consists of 37 multiple-choice questions to be answered in a maximum time limit of 75 minutes. The two types of questions in this section are of Data Sufficiency and Problem Solving categories.

The Problem Solving questions consist of problems that are a combination of arithmetic, basic algebra, and elementary geometry which assess the analytical and logical ability of the student.The Data sufficiency questions provides useful information in solving the problem and tests the student’s reasoning power to deal with unstructured data.

Following the Quantitative Section and an optional break, students must take the Verbal Section which has 41 multiple choice questions to be completed in maximum 75 minutes. Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning, and Sentence Correction are the three question types of this section. This section mainly tests the student’s grasp over American English, grammar, comprehension ability and logical reasoning.