In the last few years we have witnessed an increase in the number of business schools which accept the GRE revised General Test as an alternative to the GMAT for admission to MBA programmes, This competition certainly challenges the owners of the GMAT and puts pressure on them to find ways to maintain the popularity of the test among test takers.
Clear Admit summarises the latest information from GMAC on the pilot GMAT ‘Select Section Order’ option.
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which owns the rights and administers the GMAT, plans a pilot programme where a group of test takers will have the chance to choose the order of the sections they complete during the exam.
The testing period of the pilot research will be limited. It is expected to run from 23 February through 8 March, 2016. The exact test dates will vary depending on test center availability and other logistics issues. Apart from the fact that participants will be able to choose the order of the sections, the exam will be the same as any other GMAT exam, with standard test center policies and registration fees in place. As for the score at the end of the exam, if you accept it, it will be recorded as a legitimate score and included in all future score reports. There will be no indication that the score was achieved under the ‘Select Section Order’ pilot process.
Participants in the research will get to choose from four options in terms of the order in which they tackle the respective sections of the test - quantitative, verbal, analytical writing and integrated reasoning. Optional breaks will be offered before and/or after each of the longer quant and verbal sections. The table below represents the four available options, with corresponding optional breaks.
According to the official GMAT website, invitations to participate in the experimental exam were sent to a randomly selected set of candidates who had registered on mba.com with previously cancelled GMAT scores. The invited participants represent less than 1% of the total testing volume - the minimum required to obtain meaningful results, according to GMAC. Given the small sample size, the research is not expected to impact the admissions pool for schools, since the chance that any individual school will receive a substantial number of the research scores is “extremely unlikely,” according to GMAC.
In the FAQ section of the GMAT Select Section Order pilot programme GMAC wrote:
The wider launch of the Select Section Order feature will depend greatly on the results of the research. GMAC may decide not to launch the feature for any number of reasons, including candidate dissatisfaction.
Depending on the participation levels, GMAC may opt to send out additional invitations to some candidates to take part in the research again at a later period of time. No schedule for further release of the Select Section Order feature has been determined yet.
Source: Clear Admit
