Some people say that a Master’s degree is the new Bachelor’s degree. Master’s programs in everything from business administration to painting are advertised all over. With the availability of online learning, there is almost no limit to what school someone can choose. The options, and the requirements to apply, are enough to make a person’s head spin.
Many Master’s programs, particularly business-oriented ones, require that applicants achieve a certain score on the GMAT. Acronyms like this might bring back high school nightmares of SATs and ACTs. Who can remember what those letters stand for? Well, GMAT stands for Graduate Management Admission Test. Like the SAT and ACT, the GMAT measures the applicant’s abilities on a numerical scale. It contains a verbal section that evaluates reading comprehension, critical reasoning, and sentence correction. The numerical reasoning section evaluates problem solving, i.e. math skills, and data sufficiency. Finally, there is the analytical writing section. Each section is timed and is scored separately. Different questions are worth more, depending on level of difficulty, and the number of questions answered figures into the total score.
If this all seems a bit mystifying, a gmat prep course can help. A prep course can help give a prospective test-taker a handle on what to expect. He or she can get acquainted with the structure of the test and the types of questions. A wealth of prep courses are available online. Some of them offer hundreds, or even thousands of sample questions.
On the test day, the applicant can choose up to five schools to have scores sent to. After taking the GMAT, the applicant will need to allow a few weeks for scores to be sent to the selected schools. After completing the test, the applicant will have taken one giant step closer to graduate school and that coveted Master’s degree.