The Verbal Section

The verbal section of the GMAT contains 36 questions. Each question has 5 possible answers and only one correct answer. You can't skip a question without answering it and you can't go back to a question that you have already answered due the adaptive nature of the test.
The duration of the verbal section is 65 minutes, without internal division of time for the questions. This means that the examinee has to regulate his/her time and decide how much time to invest in each question (note: correct time management is extremely important in an adaptive test like the GMAT and may impact the score significantly).

Questions Types in the Verbal Section of the GMAT:

* Sentence Correction Questions – This section tests your ability to precisely identify the original meaning of a sentence and then define the best way to relay that meaning.  SC questions begin with a short text, part of which is underlined. You are required to check if there is a grammatical error or a mistake in the wording or phrasing, and decide out of the possible answers the best way to re-write the text.
Each test contains about 15 SC questions.

* Reading Comprehension Questions – This section tests your ability to absorb and understand complex ideas and theories in disciplines such as, but not limited to; economics, history, science and technology.
Each test contains 3-4 RC passages. Each passage is comprised of 40-60 lines of text, followed by 4-5 consecutive questions.

For example, the score 40 is in the 90th percentile, meaning that 90% of examinees who took the GMAT worldwide in the last three years (almost one million people) got 40 or less.


GMAT Total Score:

Your verbal section score is calculated together with your quantitative section score in order to create the Total Score. This score ranges from 200 to 800, always rounded to the nearest 10.
The following table shows the total scores received as calculated with different combinations of verbal and quantitative scores. For example, a student with a quantitative score of 48 and a verbal score of 37 would get a total score of 690 (a ten point deviation is possible due to the calculation method):

The Total Score also comes with a percentile. The following chart shows the updated percentiles of the GMAT Total Score:

For example, the score 700 is in the 90th percentile, meaning that 90% of examinees taking the GMAT worldwide in the last three years (almost one million people), got 700 or less.


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