New GMAC Feature - Select the Order of Sections on GMAT [Pilot]

As reported by vabhs192003 here, GMAC is piloting a program that will allow test-takers to select the order of Quant, Verbal, AWA, and IR. This is a cool great thing and probably an indicator of some improvements to come to GMAT. It is always helpful to those who are stronger in one section vs. the other to pick the order of the section since your performance depends on your fatigue. With this option, test takers can now tackle their lower-ranking sections first with the hope of having the best performance there. This is a welcome news to those who were weak in Verbal (most of us) as now we can choose to tackle that section first. It makes the playing field more even for the quant-heavy folks. Will it actually materialize? I think there is a good chance folks will get some points on the first section they choose to tackle but also potentially lose a few in the last one. My guess is that most will choose to have V, Q, IR, AWA. I am hoping perhaps this will make Quant a little harder for the quant-heavy guys and perhaps slow down the erosion/inflation of that score ruler and puts some pressure on Verbal.




Important - the pilot is invitation only at this time. Dates are: February 23, 2016 to March 8, 2016.
If you were lucky to be invited and are planning to take the test around that timeframe, then I would book my test sooner than later. There is a chance the dates will fill up in your test center and you don't want to miss this opportunity. Interesting enough, it is only available to those who have canceled their scores previously. Only 1% of the test volume received the invites, so that's about 2K-2.5K people (out of 200K unique test takers or 250K tests taken). Obviously, if you got the invite, you should consider yourself lucky and jump on the opportunity.

What if you did not get invited?
There is still good news - should the pilot prove positive, which I think it will, GMAC is likely to roll this program to the general population within 3-6 months so most of us can take the test in the summer and pick our own section order. Of course, it may take much longer or GMAC may notice something that they were not expecting and never roll it out. We will see. Either way, it is good news to see that they are hoping to improve our test taking experience and are innovating.

Is this pilot program available to anyone taking the GMAT?
No, participation in this pilot program is by invitation only. Invitations were sent to a random subset of candidates that were registered on mba.com with previously cancelled GMAT scores

More info
More info is available on the new FAQ page for the Pilot program: https://www.mba.com/us/frequently-asked- ... pilot.aspx