What is GMAT?

What is GMAT? This question had been pestering me for a few days. Initially I found this website from a University’s site. But it’s a US company and I’m required to pay USD250 to take this exam. I don’s have any credit card so this way doesn’t work for me. At last I found a company – Princeton Review which has a branch in Malaysia providing this course. I phoned them and got some details.

Actually the course I applied only requires me to take GRE. Just in case I might want to take up an MBA in the future, GMAT might be useful. Most of the universities accept GMAT scores up to five years old. There’re 4 parts in this exam. The first two parts test your English. Both are 30 minutes long. The third part is about mathematics and the duration is 75 minutes. The last part is verbal and also takes 75 minutes. There’s an optional 5 minutes break in between so the whole exam is roughly 4 hours long. This is by far the longest exam I have ever come across.

I went MPH yesterday and found some text reference on GMAT. The books are expensive. It costs from RM70 to RM 130 varying from publisher. Does anyone knows where and how to get cheaper books? The book has got very detailed explanation on the exam and how to tackle it. Part 3 and part 4 is particularly interesting. It’s a multiple choice question which has got 5 options. You have to take this exam on a computer and the tricky part is that you have to answer the question according to the order. This means that you can’t skip the questions that you don’t know how to answer. It actually goes like this. You start with say 500 points; the computer will give you a question. If you answer the question correctly, the computer adds some points to you and you get a harder question. Similarly, if you get the wrong answer, the computer deducts some points from you and you get a relatively easier question. In other words, the computer will try to “adjust” you to the mean points.

I’ve gone through the math questions. It might look complicated at first sight. It however involves only simple basic mathematics. Perhaps only form 5 standard. However it requires critical thinking and reasoning. I like these types of questions the most. After all maths is always one of my favorite. The only problem for me is the language questions. I have not taken any English exams and classes for more than a year.

Princeton Review offers the course at RM3999. Due to the time and financial constrain, I might buy some text reference and do some self study. The exam fees cost RM300. I planned to take this exam by December. This means that I have an extra “subject” for this semester. Lol.

P/S : There’s a bloggers forum tomorrow night. Check out the details in Kit’s Blog and Screenshots.