GMAC announced today that starting on April 16, the GMAT® exam will be shorter by 30 minutes to give test-takers a more streamlined experience and help reduce their anxiety about sitting for the exam. The total test time on the updated exam will now be 3.5 hours instead of 4 hours, including breaks and instructions.

GMAC will be reducing the number of unscored (research) questions in the Quantitative and Verbal Reasoning sections of the exam, as well as streamlining the non-exam screens test-takers see at the test center (tutorial, instructions).

In the Quantitative Reasoning section, there will be 31 questions with section time of 62 minutes (instead of 39 questions and 75 minutes today), and in the Verbal Reasoning section there will be 36 questions with section time of 65 minutes (instead of 41 questions and 75 minutes today).

This change will not affect GMAT exam scoring as the number of scored questions will not change. The Total Score and individual Quant and Verbal section scores will be comparable to the exams taken prior to this change. In addition, the exam content, question types, and average time per question will not change. It’s the same GMAT exam – just shorter by a half hour.