Prospective applicants to business school who take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will now have the ability to preview their unofficial scores before deciding whether to report or cancel them, the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns and administers the exam, announced yesterday. This new score reporting feature, available to all test takers, will go into effect at all 600 test centers worldwide that administer the exam beginning tomorrow.
“We are pleased to offer this feature as part of our efforts to make preparing for and taking the GMAT exam easier,” Ashok Sarathy, GMAC vice president of product management, said in a statement. “The new score reporting feature gives test takers more certainty and control in the testing process and in how their scores are reported to schools.”
Prior to now, GMAT test takers have had the option of reporting or canceling their scores immediately after taking the test and before leaving the test center—based on how they feel they did on the exam.
Under this new process, test takers will be able to view their unofficial scores – Integrated Reasoning, Quantitative, Verbal and Total – and then will have two minutes to decide whether to accept them. If they do not make a choice, their scores will be cancelled. Test takers will have 60 days to reinstate a score they cancel in the event that they decide later they want to send it, for a $100 fee. After 60 days, scores will no longer be retrievable.
Analytical Writing Assessment scores will not be available immediately and so are unaffected by the change. They will be reported on official score reports delivered within 20 days.
Test takers should note that all sittings of the test will still be reported to the schools. In other words, if you see your score, then opt to cancel, the schools will still see that you did take the test (and that you canceled the score).
GMAC’s Sarathy recommends that students who think they may want to take advantage of this new feature know before sitting down to the test what score they are willing to accept, so they can make the appropriate decision of whether to send or cancel their scores in the two minutes they are given to decide.
