What to Bring to the Test Center
- A government-issued ID
- A snack
- A bottle of water
How do you register and practice for the GMAT? What is taking the actual test really like? What do you do if something goes wrong? This chapter will answer these and other practical questions.
The easiest way to register for the exam is by telephone or online. You will be given a list of dates, times, and testing centers that are located near you. One of the
actual advantages of the GMAT is that you get to schedule the time of the exam. If you are not a morning person, ask for an afternoon time slot. If you can’t think after midday, ask for a morning time slot.
Keep in mind that certain slots get filled quickly, so be sure to call ahead of time. The registration fee is $250 (worldwide). Those who schedule an exam in certain countries will incur taxes. Tax rate information is available at www.mba.com in the GMAT registration section. Note that checks or money orders payable in U.S. dollars must be drawn from banks located in the United States or Canada.
As you prepare for the GMAT, it’s important to know—in advance—what the experience of taking the test is like, so that you can mimic those conditions during practice tests. When you are taking a practice test, turn off your telephone, and try to strictly observe the time limits of the test sections, and even the time limits of the breaks in between sections. To mimic the experience of working with a scratch booklet, buy a spiral notebook filled with grid paper. If you know when you will be taking the real GMAT, try to schedule your practice tests around the same time of day.
If you are the sort of person who likes to have a mental picture of what a new experience will be like, you might even consider visiting the test center ahead of time. This serves two purposes: first, you’ll know how to get there on the day of the test, and second, you’ll be familiar with the ambiance in advance.
Try to keep to your regular routine. Staying up late to study the last few nights before the test is counterproductive. It’s important to get regular amounts of exercise and sleep. Continue the study plan you’ve been on from the beginning, but taper off toward the end. You’ll want to take your last practice exam no later than several days before the real test, so you’ll have time to go over the results carefully. The last day or so should be devoted to any topics that still give you trouble.
Get together the things you will need to bring with you for the test: directions to the test center (if you haven’t already been there); a mental list of the schools you wish to receive your test scores (if you can’t identify these when you take the test, you will have to pay $28 extra per school to get scores sent out later); a snack, and some water. Snacks and water are not allowed in the testing room, but they can be placed in your locker and consumed during a break. Don’t bother to bring a calculator—no calculators are permitted for the adaptive sections (Quantitative and Verbal) of the GMAT. An onscreen calculator is provided for the Integrated Reasoning section.
Once you have gathered everything you need, take the night off. Go to a movie. Relax. There is no point in last-minute cramming. You are as ready as you are
going to be.
If you are taking the test in the morning, get up early enough that you have time to eat breakfast, if that is your usual routine, and do a couple of GMAT questions you’ve already seen in order to get your mind working. If you are taking the test in the afternoon, make sure you get some lunch, and, again, do a few GMAT problems. You don’t want to have to warm up on the test itself.
Bring a snack to the test center. Use your breaks to eat the food you’ve brought, or to run to the bathroom.
Unlike testing sessions you may have attended in the past, where hundreds of people were lined up to take the same test, you may well be the only person at your testing center taking the GMAT. You’ll be asked to present your government-issued ID, and an employee will take your photograph and scan your palm using a palm vein scanner. Finally, you’ll be led to the computer station where you will take the test. The station consists of a desk with a computer monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a scratch booklet, and a black, fine-tipped marker. The marker they will give you to write in your scratch booklet has tendency to dry up when left uncapped—so during breaks, remember to cap it. If you need another marker or another scratch booklet during the test, simply raise your hand, and a proctor will bring it. However, the timer won’t stop while the proctor brings you another scratch booklet or marker. Use your practice tests to learn to fit your scratch work into one scratch booklet. Before the test starts, make sure you’re comfortable. Is there enough light? Is your desk sturdy? Don’t be afraid to speak up; you’re going to be spending four hours at that desk.
There will almost certainly be other people in the same room at other computer stations taking other computer-adaptive tests. You might be seated next to someone taking the licensing exam for architects or a test for school nurses, or even a test for golf pros.
None of the people in the room will have necessarily started at the same time. The testing center employee will show you how to begin the test, but the computer itself will be your proctor from then on. It will tell you how much time you have left in a section, when your time is up, and when to go on to the next section.
The test center employees will be available if you have a question. They will also monitor the room for security purposes. Just in case their eagle eyes aren’t enough, video and audio systems will record everything that happens in the room.
The process sounds less human than it really is. Our students have generally found the test center employees to be quite nice.
During most of the test, your screen will look a lot like this:
The problem you’re working on at any particular moment will be near the top of the screen (by the way, the answer to this one is the third choice). At the top right will be a readout of the time remaining in the section, the number of the question you’re working on, and how many total questions there are in the section. Here are the main interface items you will see on the screen:
End Exam—By clicking on this button, you can end the test at any moment. We don’t recommend that you do this unless you actually become ill. Even if you decide not to have your test scored (an option they will give you at the end of the exam), you might as well finish—it’s great practice, and besides, GMAC has no intention of giving you a refund.
Time—The time you have left to complete the section is displayed in the upper right of the screen. You can hide the time by clicking on it, and you can make it reappear by clicking on the icon in its place. During the last few minutes of the test, the time is automatically displayed and you cannot hide it.
Question Number—The question number that you are on is also displayed in the upper right, and it works just like the time display: You can hide it by clicking on it or make it reappear by clicking on the icon. During the last few minutes of the test, the question number is automatically displayed and cannot be hidden.
Help—During the test this button provides test and section directions and information about using the software.
Next—When you’ve answered a question by clicking on the small bubble in front of the answer you think is correct, you press this button.
Confirm—After you press “Next,” a pop-up window will open and ask you to confirm your answer. Select “yes” to continue to the next question.
Everyone knows that sinking feeling of not knowing how to do a test problem, but before you start panicking, there are a few things to bear in mind about the GMAT.
First of all, as any Princeton Review graduate will tell you, seeing hard questions on the adaptive (math and verbal) sections of the GMAT is a good sign. Because these sections are adaptive, you don’t get a hard question until you’ve answered a bunch of increasingly difficult medium questions correctly—which means you are probably already on track for a good score.
Second, if you have gone through this book and taken the practice tests, then chances are good that if you reread the question and think about it for a few seconds, you may get an idea of how to start it (and starting is half the battle).
Third, you should remember that approximately one-fourth of the questions on the adaptive sections of this test don’t even count. They are “experimental questions” being tried out for future versions of the GMAT, so there’s no point in getting too upset over a question that might not even get scored.
And fourth, if you are really stuck, then you can pull out The Princeton Review’s arsenal of POE (Process of Elimination) techniques to do some very shrewd guessing.
If you run out of time without having answered all the questions in one of the adaptive sections, the computer just moves you on to the next section. As we said earlier, for adaptive sections, the computer keeps an updated estimate of your score as you move through the section. If you don’t get to answer some questions, the computer deducts points (based on an algorithm) and gives you a score based on the questions you have answered. So, you could get a score on the adaptive sections by answering only one math and one verbal question. Of course, that score would be pretty low!
For the Integrated Reasoning section, you also cannot skip a question and move onto the next question. For questions that have multiple parts, you also need to answer every part of the question before you move onto the next question. Like the adaptive sections, you can run out of time, however, and leave questions unanswered. Unfortunately, GMAC had not released the details of how the Integrated Reasoning section is scored when this book was written. For up to date information about how the Integrated Reasoning section is scored and your best strategy to maximize your score on this section, be sure to check out our advice on PrincetonReview.com.
You might think it would be better to skip any questions you don’t have time to answer at the end of an adaptive section—but in fact, the reverse is true: If time is running out, you will almost certainly get a higher score by clicking through and answering any remaining questions at random. This is because the penalty for getting a question wrong diminishes sharply toward the end of each adaptive section (when the computer has already largely decided your score). The penalty for each question skipped at the end of an adaptive section is actually greater than the penalty for getting one of those last questions wrong.
In the following chapters, we will give you all the specific mathematical and verbal skills you need to ace the Math, Verbal, and Integrated Reasoning sections. We will also raise the Process of Elimination to a fine art—in case you have to guess.
For each new question, put the previous question behind you. Don’t get rattled if you think you got the previous question wrong. Even if your current question seems easier, it could be experimental. Just do your best to answer the current question correctly.
When you finish, the computer will ask you if you want the test to count. If you say no, or you just walk away, the computer will not record your score, and no schools will ever see it. Of course, neither will you. GMAC will not let you look at your score and then decide whether you want to keep it. You should also know that if you do cancel your scores, your future score reports will show this.
If you tell the computer that you want the test to count, then it will give you your unofficial score right then and there on the screen. (Test center employees can print out the unofficial score report.) Within 20 days, you’ll receive your official results online. If you choose to cancel at the test site, you will not be able to change your mind later. By the same token, once you’ve chosen to see your score, you can’t cancel it.
We have found that almost nothing ever goes wrong at the test centers. They are professionally run. But in the unlikely event that there is a technical glitch with your assigned computer, or if you want to complain about test center conditions or some other anomaly, it is best to start the process before you leave the test center by filing a complaint immediately after the test is over. If possible, get the test center staff to corroborate your complaint. Then, as soon as possible after the test is over, contact either Pearson VUE or GMAT Customer Service by one of the following methods:
E-mail: pvtestsecurity@pearson.com
Web: www.pearsonvue.com/contact/gmat/security
Phone: 800-717-GMAT or 952-681-3680
No matter how high or low you score on the test and no matter how much you improve your performance with this book, you should never accept the score GMAC assigns you as an accurate assessment of your abilities. The temptation to see a high score as evidence that you’re a genius, or a low score as evidence that you’re an idiot, can be very powerful.
When you’ve read this book and practiced our techniques on real GMAT questions, you’ll be able to judge for yourself whether the GMAT actually measures much besides how well you do on the GMAT.
Think of this as a kind of game—a game you can win.