Dr. Lawrence Rudner presented an enlightening seminar on the GMAT, presenting research that shows an interesting statistic: the older you are, the worse you perform on the exam.  The “peak” of a GMAT test-taker appears to be at the age of 27 or 28, and older people tend not to take as much test prep and score, on average, 30 points lower.

What are some other interesting facts according to the GMAC seminar in London?

•    the GMAT is testing math skills at a 10th grade level
•    geographic trends are the reason for declining percentiles with a large increase in the average quantitative score but not much change in the verbal
•    there are more than 50% non-U.S. GMAT test takers
•    students receive a fixed number of data sufficiency, reading comprehension, critical reasoning, problem solving and sentence correction questions

Want a piece of important advice from the test owner of the GMAT?  It’s better to guess than omit questions, as there is a severe penalty for not completing the test.