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GMAT Orientation—Your GMAT Scores and Score Report
Every GMAT test-taker is awarded four scaled scores:

  1. a Quantitative Ability score (on a 0-60 scale)
  2. a Verbal Ability score (on a 0-60 scale)
  3. a Total score (on a 200-800 scale)
  4. an Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) score (on a 0-6 scale, in half-point intervals)
Here you’ll learn how these scores are tabulated and reported to you and to the B-schools. You’ll also learn how repeating the GMAT affects your score report and your chances of admission, and what changes might be in store for the GMAT scoring and reporting process.

Your Quantitative, Verbal, and Total Scores

Your Quantitative and Verbal scores are each based on three factors:

  • the number of questions to which you responded correctly
  • the difficulty level of the questions to which you responded correctly
  • the range of cognitive abilities measured among the questions to which you responded correctly.
The computerized testing system employs a complex algorithm to account for each of these three factors.

Your Total score is based on your Quantitative and Verbal scores, which are combined (given equal weight) and converted to a different scale.

NOTE: The testing service has employed the same rather arbitrary numerical scales (0-60 and 200-800) for decades. These scales are likely to remain unchanged in the foreseeable future — so older GMAT scores can easily be compared with more recent ones.

Your Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) Score

You'll receive a single Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) score for both of your GMAT essays. Here's how the scoring process works:

  1. Each of your essays is graded, on a scale of 0-6, by a human reader and by a computerized writing evaluator called E-Rater.
  2. If E-Rater’s grade for an essay differs from the human reader’s by more than one point, then a second human reader reads and grades the essay.
  3. Your final grade for each essay is the average of two grades — one awarded by a human reader and the other by E-Rater (or by the second human reader).
  4. Your AWA score is the average of two final grades — one for each of your two GMAT essays — rounded up to the nearest half-point.

How the human readers evaluate your essays. In evaluating the overall quality of your writing, GMAT readers will consider four general areas of ability:

  • Content: your ability to present persuasive and relevant ideas and arguments, through the use of sound reasoning and supporting examples
  • Organization: your ability to present your ideas in a cohesive and organized manner
  • Language: your facility with the English language (diction, word usage, and vocabulary)
  • Grammar: your facility with the conventions of Standard Written English, including grammar and syntax (sentence structure)

NOTE: All GMAT readers are college or university faculty members. (Most are either English or Communications professors.) Each of your two GMAT essays will be read and evaluated by a different human reader. Each reader evaluates your writing independently of the other, and neither is informed of the other's grade.

How E-Rater evaluates your essays. E-Rater evaluates each of your essays for grammar, syntax, word usage, diction, idiom, spelling, and punctuation — but not for content. (A computer program obviously cannot evaluate the ideas that an essay seeks to convey.)

Test-Taker Response Required for Score Tabulation

For each of the two multiple-choice sections, the CAT system will tabulate a score regardless of the number of available questions you've answered, except that if you don't respond to at least one question during a section an "NS" (no score) will appear on your score report for that section only. During each of the two essay sections, if you fail to key in (type) at least one character using the CAT word processor, you will automatically receive a score of 0 (on a scale of 0 to 6) for that section; this score will appear on your report.

GMAT Percentile Rankings

You'll also receive a percentile rank, from 0% to 99%, for each of your four GMAT scores. A percentile rank indicates how you performed relative to the entire GMAT test-taking population during the most recent three-year period. For example, a percentile rank of 70% means that you scored higher than 70% (and lower than 30%) of all other GMAT test-takers during the most recent three years.

Your GMAT Score Report

Immediately upon completing the GMAT, and while still in the testing room, you may elect to view your unofficial Quantitative, Verbal and Total scores. (Once you elect to view these scores, you no longer have the option of canceling them.) In the days immediately after your testing session, each of your two GMAT essays will be read and graded by a human reader, and will be rated by E-Rater. Once your AWA score is determined, ETS will mail to you an official score report. The report will indicate all four scaled scores, as well as percentile rankings for each one. Expect to receive your official score report within two weeks after testing.

At the same time ETS mails your score report to you, ETS will also transmit a score report to each school you've designated to receive your score report. (You can send reports to as many as five schools at no charge.) Score reports provided to the schools do not include percentile rankings.

Reporting and Use of Multiple GMAT Scores

ETS reports your three most recent GMAT scores to each school to which you’ve directed a score report. The majority of schools simply average your three most recently reported sets of scores. Average Quantitative, Verbal, Total, and AWA scores are each determined separately for this purpose.

A minority of schools have refined this approach toward multiple GMAT scores. For example, some schools disregard a score that is sufficiently lower than another score for the same ability — on the basis that the low score unfairly distorts the test-taker’s ability in that area. Other schools disregard all but your highest score of each type in any event. (This approach is increasingly uncommon, since it discriminates in favor of test-takers who can afford to take the GMAT again and again.)

NOTE: If you are considering repeating the GMAT, check with the schools to which you are applying for their specific policies regarding multiple GMAT scores. Those policies might weigh in your decision whether to repeat the test.

The Future of GMAT Disclosure and Score Reporting

The GMAC and ETS are currently considering further refinements in the GMAT disclosure and reporting process. The first two listed below might already be implemented by the time you take the GMAT:

  • Electronic transmittal of score reports to test-takers.
  • Disclosure of AWA responses (the two essays) to the schools and to test-takers.
  • Disclosure of Quantitative and Verbal test questions to test-takers. (This development is unlikely in the near future; since the computerized testing system creates a unique sequence of test questions for each test-taker, full disclosure of the test is currently impracticable.)
  • Customizing GMAT scores for each school. For example, if a particular school determines that Reading Comprehension should be weighted more heavily than Critical Reasoning, scores can automatically be adjusted accordingly. (Currently, separate scores are not reported for the different components within the Quantitative, Verbal, and AWA sections.)
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