GMAC's free official GMAT prep is the GMAT Official Starter Kit (70 real questions, a guided study and two full-length practice exams) and the 6-Week Study Planner, both on mba.com. Use one exam as a baseline, the questions for targeted work, and the second exam as a checkpoint.
The free official GMAT prep comes from GMAC, the organisation behind the exam, and it has two parts. The GMAT Official Starter Kit contains a sampler of 70 real GMAT questions, a step-by-step guided study and two full-length practice exams (GMAT Official Practice Exams 1 and 2). The 6-Week Study Planner turns that material into a weekly schedule. Both are on mba.com, GMAC's site for candidates, and used in the right order they show you your starting level, the question types that cost you points and, once, whether your study is working.
What GMAC gives away free
| Free resource | What it contains | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| GMAT Official Starter Kit | 70 real GMAT questions, a guided study and two full-length practice exams | A baseline, first targeted practice and one later checkpoint |
| 6-Week Study Planner | A step-by-step planner for setting a schedule, choosing study activities and tracking strengths, focus areas and progress | Turning good intentions into a weekly routine |
| Sample questions on gmac.com | Questions written by GMAC's own experts for each section, with answers and explanations | A first look at the formats before your baseline test |
GMAC describes its official practice exams as using the same algorithm, scoring and timing as the real exam. That is what makes the two free ones valuable: they adapt question by question, as the GMAT does, and they score you on the real 205–805 scale. Treat them as measuring instruments, not as practice material to work through quickly.
What the free material does not include
The rest of GMAC's official prep is paid: the Official Guide series, each book with an online question bank; Official Practice Questions, section-specific collections of hundreds of extra questions; and further Official Practice Exams, which bring the number of official full-length exams to six, the two free ones included. None of it is compulsory. Whether you need any of it depends on what the free material shows you.
How to use the free material, step by step
- Learn the format before your first exam. The GMAT has three 45-minute sections: Quantitative Reasoning (21 questions, no calculator), Verbal Reasoning (23 questions of Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning) and Data Insights (20 questions across five question types, with an on-screen calculator). You choose the section order, you can bookmark as many questions as you like, and you can change up to three answers per section. GMAC's exam overview sets this out. A few of GMAC's sample questions are enough to see each format before you are timed on it.
- Take Practice Exam 1 as your baseline. GMAC recommends treating at least one practice exam as a true simulation: timed, in a quiet place, without interruptions. Sit all three sections in one go, in the order you expect to use on test day.
- Review every question you missed, guessed or ran short of time on. Note the section, the question type and the cause: a gap in content, a misread question, a tempting wrong answer, or time. The review is where the baseline earns its keep, and it should take longer than the exam did.
- Work the 70-question sampler and the guided study, weakest section first. Do the questions untimed at first, then against the clock. The aim is not to finish the set but to change the pattern your baseline showed.
- Use the 6-Week Study Planner to fix the weeks. GMAC's guideline is six to eight weeks of focused study as a minimum for most test takers, and longer if your time is limited or your target is far from your baseline. A planner you follow beats an ambitious one you abandon.
- Save Practice Exam 2 for a checkpoint. Take it after several weeks of targeted work, under the same conditions as the first. Compare the two section by section rather than total against total.
- Decide what comes next from the comparison. If a section has moved, keep going. If it has not, you need either more practice on that section or a different approach to it.
Making two free exams count
Two full-length exams are not many, and the order you use them in matters more than most candidates expect:
- Do not take both in the first week. The second exam should measure the effect of your study, not repeat your baseline.
- Do not resit an exam and treat the score as new. A second attempt at a test you have already seen measures your memory of it as much as your ability.
- Keep the conditions identical. The same section order, the same time of day where possible, no pauses. Otherwise the difference between the two results tells you very little.
GMAC notes that most learners aim to complete two to four full-length practice exams before test day. The free kit covers the first two; anything beyond that comes from paid official exams or from another provider's tests.
Judging free material from other sources
Search for free GMAT prep and you will find far more than GMAC's own material: question collections, practice tests, videos and forum threads. Some of it was written for the previous version of the exam, which was organised differently. Before you spend hours on any of it, check four things against GMAC's description of the current test:
- Three sections: Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning and Data Insights, 64 questions in 2 hours 15 minutes, with no essay.
- The right question types: Verbal Reasoning is Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning only, and Quantitative Reasoning is problem solving in arithmetic and algebra. Sentence correction drills and geometry-heavy sets belong to the old test. Data Sufficiency now sits in Data Insights.
- The current scale: totals from 205 to 805, ending in 5, and section scores from 60 to 90. A practice test that reports a total out of 800 ending in 0 is scoring a different exam.
- Adaptivity: the GMAT adapts question by question within each section. A fixed paper set can teach you a question type, but it cannot tell you what you would score.
When the free material is not enough
The free material runs out at two full-length exams and 70 questions. If your checkpoint shows a section still holding you back, you need more timed questions on exactly that section, more full-length tests, or a teacher who can show you why a wrong answer keeps looking right. On this site:
- The GMAT practice tests are 20 full-length tests plus a free diagnostic, run on the real section timing; each test can be taken twice and stays on your account for 12 months.
- The GMAT question bank lets you filter by section and difficulty and remembers what you have solved; you can answer 30 questions free once you have an account.
- The live online GMAT course runs as a group course in classes of at most six, or as one-to-one lessons that start from a diagnostic.
Start with what is free. Its real value is the information it gives you about what, if anything, is worth adding.