Analytical Writing Assessment added to At-Home GMAT Exam
It’s been more than a year after the Graduate Management Admission Council rushed to produce an online version of the GMAT exam. According to a recent Poets&Quants article, the council is adding the missing section of the exam to the at-home version. Prospective MBA graduate students can now take the analytical writing assessment part of the GMAT exam at home too. The updated GMAT exam will be available on May 20th this year.
The GMAT exam will launch several new features beginning May 20:
To be more competitive with the GRE, the Graduate Management Admission Council decided to change a few things. It will now allow test takers to view their unofficial scores immediately after completing the exam. At the moment, test takers are not able to preview scores when done with the exam. Test takers are also not allowed to view their scores for seven business days - even if they have already selected MBA programs to send the score to.
Applicants will also be able to choose which section order to take in the exam - akin to the in-person GMAT test centers. You can now decide to start with the quantitative portion, the verbal portion, the integrated reasoning portion, or the analytical writing assessment.
Most importantly, applicants will have the option of two eight-minute breaks. Not just the one break in previous years.
The current GMAT exam will continue to be available all the way through May 19. Then, starting May 20, the new enhanced version will be available.
The online version of the GMAT exam is still not available in several countries.
The online version is still not available in countries such as Mainland China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan. The reasons are mainly due to regulatory and local data privacy rules. Another reason is that the proctoring support for the at-home version is only being offered in English.
Extended time for all online GMAT test takers starting May 20.
The at-home exam time will be extended with the addition of the analytical writing assessment portion of the test, along with an additional break. The existing estimate is approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes with one, optional 5-minute break before the integrated reasoning section. It will now equal to the test centre GMAT exam length which is three and a half hours long.
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