Coronavirus impact: GMAT exams to be held online from April 20

The GMAT test is conducted at over 650 test centres in 114 countries

Starting April 20, students wishing to take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) for pursuing higher education across the globe can do it from their homes. 

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the body which conducts these tests, has introduced this new step in view of the coronavirus lockdown. 

The GMAT, accepted as admission criterion by over 2,000 business schools across the globe, will be conducted online from April 20 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Global Management Admission Council said the registrations were opened on Tuesday.

"Supporting candidates in their pursuit of business school and helping schools evaluate talent has always been our highest priority. As COVID-19 evolved, and quickly changed how we have traditionally administered the GMAT exam, we transitioned focus to developing an online testing solution that empowers business schools and candidates to discover and evaluate each other during this interim period," said GMAT head Vineet Chabra.

"GMAT Online will maintain the standard of offering a valid and rigorous assessment, with critical security practices and protocols tailored for an online proctored environment," he added.

According to Chabra, the interim GMAT online exam will help candidates feel safe while meeting upcoming application deadlines and confidently continue with their goals, while also helping business schools globally as they look for relevant ways to evaluate candidates for their admissions process.

The GMAT assesses analytical writing and problem-solving abilities, while also addressing data sufficiency, logic, and critical reasoning skills that it believes to be vital to real-world business and management success. It can be taken up to five times a year but no more than 8 times in total and attempts must be at least 16 days apart.

More than 7,000 programmes at approximately 2,300 graduate business schools around the world accept the GMAT as part of the selection criteria.

The test is conducted at over 650 test centres in 114 countries. Over 2 lakh candidates took the test in 2019.

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 120,000 people worldwide, nearly 70 per cent of them in Europe. Over 1,20,000 deaths have now been recorded since the epidemic first emerged in China in December.