Deciding the best time of the day to take the exam

[Nadia222]

I took my first gmat exam at 8 am, and I honestly do not think that a morning exam is best for me. While surfing the through the mba.com site, I saw that the GMAT is offered at several different times throughout the test day, 8 am, 1pm and 4pm. Should I take my practice exams at 1 pm and 4pm (different days) to see which time works best for me?

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Hi Nadia222,

The general advice is that most people do their best word "early in the week and early in the day." Depending on the schedule that you maintain, your "perfect" day/time may vary. For people who work Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, they would probably perform best on a Monday morning. However, 8am might be too early, so the opportunity to sleep in a bit and not have to deal with morning traffic makes a noon/1pm test a bit more appealing. My suspicion would be that a 4pm Test start would be too late in the day and that you'd find your performance lagging as the evening went on.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[Bill@VeritasPrep]

I think 1 is the sweet spot if you're not a morning person. For me, 4 seems too late because then you have all day to stress about it.

[David@VeritasPrep]

I have to go with Bill on this one! Depending on your sleep cycles for many people starting at 4 PM or even 4:30 can mean low energy. If you have already started the exam at 1 PM then the adrenaline should really keep you up and going, but if you are waiting to begin at 4 to 4:30 PM then you could begin the test at low energy.

1 PM is the only time that I will sign up for the exam. 8AM is a non-starter because I have a distance to drive to the test center. If you live next door to the test center this may work well. The thing is that if you are running late and you have that tension it can actually impact your performance on the exam. 1 PM should allow for an easy trip to the test center. Now the commute home may be a different story if you finish the exam at around 5 PM! But you won't notice because you will have earned a great score....