When taking the GMAT, most personal items cannot be brought into the testing room. Restricted items include calculators, stopwatches, watch alarms, watch calculators, books, clocks, handheld electronics, cell phones, food and drinks, pens, backpacks, purses and even blank paper. Although the Graduate Management Admission Council (the company that administers the GMAT) provides an extensive list of excluded items, you may contact the admission council to ask whether any particular item would be excluded.
To prevent fraud, GMAT administrators have restrictions on leaving the testing room. During the two scheduled breaks, you are free to leave the room, but may not use cell phones or leave the general vicinity. To leave the test room during the test, you must raise your hand, request to leave the room and submit to a palm scan (a computer scan of the blood veins in your hand used for identification purposes) or digital fingerprint when entering and leaving.
The GMAT is strictly timed. In addition to the two breaks, you will have three and a half hours to complete the entire test. This includes specific time limits for each section: 30 minutes for each of the two Analytical Writing Assessment sections, 75 minutes for the Quantitative Section section and 75 minutes for the Verbal Section.
Everyone taking the test is prohibited from discussing the contents of the GMAT during the test, during breaks and after the test. Likewise, if you take the GMAT, you must agree to not share test contents using chat software, e-mail or other electronic communications.
At the start of the GMAT, you will be given five noteboards to use during the test to make handwritten notes. These noteboards may not be removed from the test taking room for any reason and must be returned to the test administrator upon completion of the GMAT. You may obtain additional noteboards by raising your hand.
To verify your identity when you arrive to take the GMAT, the test administrator will request valid identification. Acceptable forms of identification include a passport, a government-issued driver's license, a government identity card or a military identification card. Additionally, the test administrator will take some combination of a digital fingerprint, palm scan, digital signature and photograph to further verify your identity.