Test Preparation

Okay, you know the GMAT’s format and how many questions it has and so on. But what about what’s really important to you, the crucial final score? Probably very few people take standardized tests for fun, so here’s the lowdown on scoring.

How the GMAT testers figure your score

Because the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, our verbal and quantitative scores aren’t based just on the number of questions you get right. The scores you earn are based on these three factors:

The difficulty of the questions you answer
The questions become more difficult as you continue to answer correctly, so getting tough questions means you’re doing well on the test.

The number of questions that you answer
If you don’t get to all the question in the verbal and quantitative sections, your score is reduced by the proportion of questions you didn’t answer. So if you fail to answer 5 of the 37 quantitative questions, for example, your raw score would be reduced by 13 percent and your percentile rank may to from the 90th percentile to the 75th percentile.

The number of questions you answer correctly
In addition to scoring based on how difficult the questions are, the GMAT score also reflects your ability to answer those questions correctly.

GMAT essay readers determine your analytical writing assessment (AWA) score. College and university faculty members from different disciplines read your responses to the essay prompts. Two independent readers score each of the two writing assignments separately on a scale from 1 to 6, with 6 being the top score. Your final score is the average of the scores from each of the readers for each of the essays.