New Clarifications about the 2nd Optional Break, ESR, and Multiple GMAT Online retakes are confirmed by GMAC. On Feb 20, 2021, the Graduate Management Admission Council announced the enhancements outlined for the Online GMAT. ‘GMAC is introducing enhancements to the GMAT online exam that provide additional flexibility for test takers and create greater parity with the test center exam experience’, mentioned the press release.

A major change that stands out in the new version of Online GMAT is the introduction of the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section. Addressing this key change, Joy Jones, GMAC’s Chief Product Officer and General Manager of Assessments said, “There was interest from schools to include the AWA online, and we worked to make this happen to support application cycle seasonality. We’ll continue to make investments that support our schools and test-takers with enhanced and comparable online and test center exam experiences.”

Additional changes in the examination pattern include the ability to select the section order among Quants, Verbal and IR/AWA, preview the unofficial test scores immediately after the completion of the test, and avail additional, extended breaks!

Furthermore, an increase in the reschedule and cancellation fee, shift from PearsonVUE to Examity as the official exam provider are two noticeable changes!

In our recent post, we spoke in length regarding the enhanced features of the enhanced online GMAT! At the time, we were yet to hear from GMAC regarding a few additional questions we’d surfaced.

We also noticed a lot of you echoing similar concerns and hence we took perseverance, in all its overrated glory, a little too earnestly and got through to several GMAC officials to seek answers! Here is a compilation of all the burning questions we had and GMAC’s official response to the same. Take a look!


1. Why isn’t ESR available for the online GMAT exam?

The GMAT Enhanced Score Report (ESR) is only available for GMAT exams delivered at a test center. For the initial launch of the enhanced GMAT online exam, we focused on improvements related to the candidate test-taking experience. We will continue to look to make enhancements to the online exam prep experience such as the addition of an ESR for our online exams.

2. When can the candidates avail of the two 8-min breaks?

Online exams administered on or after April 8, 2021, will include the AWA section, the ability to select your Section Order, two optional 8-minute breaks (The break structure will be the same as the test center exam. There will be an optional 8-minute break between the Quant and Verbal sections, as well as one before or after the AWA+IR sections depending on the section order selected), an unofficial score preview at the end of the exam. To learn more about the differences in the GMAT™ online exam before and after April 8, click here

3. What is the reason behind the move from Pearson VUE to Examity as the official exam provider? What can the candidates expect from this change?

As we move to a standard, the permanent offering of online and test center delivery formats for the GMAT exam, our goal is to ensure that we have optimal solutions in place for those experiences. With the move to our enhanced GMAT online exam solution to Examity, tests delivered beginning April 8 will include the addition of the AWA section, the ability for candidates to select their section order, two optional 8-minute breaks, immediate unofficial score preview, and the availability of appointment dates on a rolling 6-month basis. The score sending process will remain the same and continue to be complimentary and unlimited. Pearson VUE has been and remains our long-standing partner for the delivery of the GMAT exam test center experience.

4.How many retakes are allowed for the online GMAT? Can we expect any changes in the same soon?

Candidates can retake the GMAT online exam once, for a total of two online attempts. These two online attempts count toward the overall 5-attempt rolling 12-month limit, and the 8-attempt lifetime limit. We evaluate the attempt limits on a continual basis and will update these limits as deemed appropriate & necessary.

5. What will it mean for the candidates who have taken the GMAT Online without the AWA? Will their score still be valid?

Yes, scores for GMAT online exams delivered without the AWA section (prior to April 8th) will still be valid and accepted by schools.

6. One of the schools (IIM-A) mentioned that it will accept GMAT Online only for this year's intake and will decide later on whether they will accept GMAT Online for next year. How is GMAC working with schools to resolve issues like these?

Admission criteria including the assessments that are used are entirely the school's decision and GMAC does not play any role in this process. Hence, it’s best for candidates to directly seek clarifications regarding all admissions-related information from the school directly.

GMAC will continue to offer test-taking options for our assessments like the GMAT, NMAT, EA, etc. through both channels - remote online and test centers. The choice is entirely the candidates as to which solution would work better for them. Schools, globally have accepted the online mode as it has helped them and candidates tremendously and as of date, there is no indication that the Covid19 pandemic will be over by this year well in time before next year’s admission cycle begins.

There’s no doubt that the GMAC is adapting to the current scenario and working constantly to improve the candidate’s overall test-taking experience. However, the question still looms: How will test-takers grade the new Examity platform for online exams? Will the two platforms (Pearson VUE for at-center tests & Examity for online tests) create a discrepancy in user experience?

Registration for the enhanced GMAT online exam has opened on February 17, 2021, for appointment dates beginning April 8, 2021. Testing appointments remain available for the current version of the GMAT online exam through April 7, 2021.

Let me know if you have any questions about the GMAT Online - will be happy to investigate further!
Thanks,
Anupama

Thank you for sharing this information, Anupamakashyap97. It's great to have confirmation that the break schedules for the new GMAT online starting 4/8/21 are the same as those for the test-center GMAT, for example.

However, GMAC's answer to the very first question is a non-answer: it doesn't tell us why the ESR is still not yet available for the GMAT online.

Q: Why is there no ESR for the GMAT online?
A: There is no ESR for the GMAT online.
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I agree. It is a pretty uninformative answer 😂 but it does give you a bit more insight. If they had the future coming soon or even within the next six months they probably would’ve said so. The fact that they’re saying they don’t have it, really means it’s not coming soon and not to expect it unfortunately 🤷‍♂️

Posted from my mobile device
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"We will continue to look to make enhancements to the online exam prep experience such as the addition of an ESR for our online exams."
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What’s your opinion of that quote? What do you t hi ink it means? What is your read?

Posted from my mobile device
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Haha mcelroytutoring, it is definitely not the answer I hoped for either! However, it shows that GMAC is constantly working on making improvements and decrease the disparity b/w at-center and online GMAT! Let's hope that we can access the ESR for online GMAT soon!

Here's what I don't understand: if Examity is able to score our GMAT online exams instantly, then why can't GMAC manage to provide an ESR for the GMAT online? How could they possibly score our exams without having full, detailed information about our test performance?

My suspicion is that there is much more to this ESR issue than GMAC is letting on. I think it's less an issue of technological capability, and more an issue of test security. Of course GMAC has full information about which questions we answered correctly and incorrectly, question categories and sub-categories, and probably even pacing information from our official GMAT online attempts. Thus, it's likely that the company just doesn't want to share that information with test-takers yet, for some unknown reason (maybe it doesn't want to confirm the rumor that the scoring is a bit different from the test-center exam, despite GMAC's claims to the contrary, for example).

My best guess? GMAC fears that the current pool of GMAT online questions is small enough that releasing ESRs would be akin to releasing an answer key, making it easier to confirm which answers are correct...in other words, easier to cheat.
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There's no mystery there. The information the scoring algorithm uses is different from the information in the ESR. Time spent on each question, for example, plays no role in scoring, but is important data in an ESR. Performance by content area or question type also plays no role in scoring, but is important data in an ESR. It's perfectly understandable that GMAC would have devoted their resources to ensuring the online test was functional and secure before even thinking about how to recode their ESR compiler for a new delivery system. And there are all kinds of plausible reasons there may have been delays in developing an online test ESR. Perhaps GMAC's resources are strained because of the need to change delivery systems, or perhaps they outsource ESR development to another company that hasn't been able to complete the work quickly.

Your speculations are not plausible, you have no evidence for them, and I'm not sure why you think it's helpful to bring them up here and potentially alarm test takers reading this thread. The scoring algorithm on an IRT-based test like the GMAT is simply based on probability theory. It's just math, and GMAC can no more change it than they can change the Pythagorean Theorem, so any 'rumors' that the online test is scored differently can have no basis in fact. And an ESR is in no way an 'answer key', regardless of the size of the question pool, but if GMAC were concerned about some security issue related to the size of the question pool, they would just enlarge the question pool.
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"Akin to" = similar to (not the same)

If you read my post again carefully, and note the use of the word "probably," then you will find I did not claim that GMAC necessarily has access to pacing information, because of course that's not necessary to score the test.

I stand by my initial claim that an ESR should still be otherwise possible, because properly administering and scoring the GMAT requires—at a minimum—a record of how many questions we answered correctly and incorrectly, what type of questions they were, and where in the exam those questions appeared.

Dear GMAC: if lack of pacing information is all that's holding you back from offering an ESR option, then please, if you're reading this, offer us a slightly modified ESR instead of no ESR at all: we will gladly throw another $30 at you.

We all missed you and your pro-GMAC provocations, Ian: I was afraid that you had retired there for a while.
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I'll agree with you that developing an online ESR must be possible, and I'll agree with you if you say it has taken longer than it should have. But an ESR is not "akin to... an answer key", if your exact words were important there.

I only reply to you when you say things that might be misleading to test takers. If test takers think the online GMAT is compromised in some way, that might influence their decision about whether to take it, so it's important for readers of this forum to have reliable information.



I am neither pro-GMAC nor anti-GMAC, and I can't imagine anyone besides you would characterize my posts as 'provocations'. In any event, no one on this forum should need to reply to comments like this.
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Of course an ESR (Enhanced Score Report) is not the same as an actual answer key. However, for high-level GMAT test-takers in particular, ESRs do help determine which answers they answered correctly (and by extension, the correct answers to those questions). That's why I would consider an ESR to be similar ("akin to") to an answer key, in that it either confirms or disconfirms one's originally chosen answers as correct.

Let's say, for example, that I take the GMAT online one week, and you take it the next. I order an ESR (hypothetically of course), which confirms in about 48 hours that I scored a Q51 with every counted question correct.

Wouldn't that mean I would know the correct answers to all 28 counted Quant questions I saw that day, and that I could potentially share that information with you and/or other test takers, in case they saw some of the same questions? With an ESR in hand, I would be able to know—with 100% confidence—the correct answers to those 28 questions in advance (as best as I could remember them, assuming that my questions and answers weren't being surreptitiously recorded).

I wouldn't do that, of course, but it would be theoretically possible, and I suspect that GMAC fears the same, which could be another reason for the 2-test limit for the online exam.

If you say you're not "pro GMAC," then I certainly believe you...I mean, who is, other than GMAC and its employees?
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If that were a concern, they wouldn't issue ESRs for test center tests either. And if it were a concern, it would be easy to address: I assume, with the newer retake policy, they now refresh the question pool roughly once every two weeks. So if they were concerned that an ESR relayed too much information about live questions, they could just wait at most two weeks to issue a test taker an ESR. Once the question pool is refreshed, no one would benefit from learning about the questions that test taker saw, because they won't appear on the test again. The test is also designed with security provisions to ensure no question appears too often, to ensure that a test taker is unlikely to gain any advantage by learning about a friend's questions (because two test takers aren't likely to see the same questions, even if they're of similar ability).

But it's not a concern. The questions are math questions -- the Q51 test taker in your hypothetical doesn't need an 'answer key' to work out what the right answers are. If that test taker remembers a test question, even one she might have guessed at during her test, if she's a Q51 test taker, she'll be able to work out the right answer outside of the stress of test conditions. And of course the ESR wouldn't give reliable information anyway, because the ESR does not include experimental questions. So your hypothetical test taker might think she answered a question correctly from the ESR, but might in fact have answered incorrectly if the question was experimental. You can't even be sure where the four 'quarters' of the test (the ones you see in the ESR breakdown) start and end, because the three experimental questions are inserted at random positions.
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It's not unreasonable to suspect that the pool of questions for the GMAT Online is not as large as that of the test-center GMAT (rumored to be about 1,500 questions every 3 weeks), which would help to explain GMAC's reluctance to release an ESR option that we both agree is possible, at least in modified form.

For example, souvik101990 took the Executive Assessment shortly after the GMAT Online and saw many of the same questions. He estimates a whopping 80% overlap:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/i-am-taking- ... 23850.html
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GMAC corporate-speak translation: "we aren't promising anything yet, even though the online exam has now been around for almost a full year. However, due to popular demand for an ESR option on the GMAT online, we'll continue to consider it."
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