GMAT · Guides · October 22, 2026 · 11 min read

GMAT Sample Questions with Answers: one practice question of every type, explained

The GMAT has eight question formats across three sections: Problem Solving in Quant, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension in Verbal, and Data Sufficiency, Table Analysis, Graphics Interpretation, Two-Part Analysis and Multi-Source Reasoning in Data Insights. Below is one original sample question of each type, at about medium difficulty, with the answer and explanation after it. They are written by the Nomto team, not official GMAT questions; for those, use GMAC’s free practice exams (see the last section).

The formats at a glance

In total: 64 questions in 2 hours 15 minutes. Multi-part Data Insights questions give no partial credit. For a full breakdown of topics, see the GMAT syllabus and exam pattern.

Quant: Problem Solving

A maths question with five answer choices. Topics are arithmetic, algebra, rates, ratios, percents, statistics and counting; geometry is no longer tested, and there is no calculator.

Two shuttle buses leave a terminal in Bogotá together at 6:00 a.m. One bus returns to the terminal every 18 minutes, and the other every 24 minutes. At what time will both buses next be at the terminal together?

(A) 6:06 a.m.

(B) 6:36 a.m.

(C) 6:42 a.m.

(D) 6:48 a.m.

(E) 7:12 a.m.

Answer

E. The buses meet again after the least common multiple of 18 and 24 minutes. 18 = 2 × 3² and 24 = 2³ × 3, so the LCM is 2³ × 3² = 72 minutes, and 72 minutes after 6:00 is 7:12. Choice A is the greatest common divisor (6), and C simply adds the intervals.

Data Insights: Data Sufficiency

A question and two statements. You decide whether the statements give enough information, choosing from five fixed answers:

• (A) Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient.
• (B) Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient.
• (C) BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient.
• (D) EACH statement ALONE is sufficient.
• (E) Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient.

A store reduced the price of a jacket by 20 percent. What was the price of the jacket before the reduction?

(1) The reduced price of the jacket was $64.

(2) The price reduction was $16.

Answer

D. Let the original price be p. (1) The reduced price is 80% of p: 0.8p = 64, so p = 80. Sufficient. (2) The reduction is 20% of p: 0.2p = 16, so p = 80. Sufficient. Because the percent is given in the question, either dollar amount alone fixes the price. The usual trap is A: thinking (2) also needs the reduced price. The method behind these questions is in our Data Sufficiency guide.

Verbal: Critical Reasoning

A short argument and one question about its logic: strengthen, weaken, assumption, evaluate, paradox and others.

After the town of Rensbury painted bright green bicycle lanes along its main avenue, the number of cyclists using the avenue each day doubled. The town’s planners conclude that the painted lanes made cyclists feel safer riding on the avenue.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the planners’ conclusion?

(A) The paint used for the lanes is a durable road coating that the town’s road engineers expect to last about five years before it must be renewed.

(B) Over the same period, cycling increased by a similar amount on other Rensbury streets that received no painted lanes.

(C) In a survey, most cyclists who began using the avenue after the lanes were painted said they had avoided it before because it felt dangerous.

(D) Some drivers complained to the town council that the new lanes made the avenue’s car lanes narrower and parking harder to find.

(E) Encouraged by the results, Rensbury plans to paint similar green lanes on two more of its busiest streets next year.

Answer

C. The conclusion is that the lanes made cyclists feel safer; the evidence is only that cyclist numbers doubled. The survey links the new riders directly to safety: they used to avoid the avenue because it felt dangerous. B is the opposite trap: a town-wide rise suggests the lanes were not the cause, which weakens the conclusion. A, D and E say nothing about why cyclists came. More on every question type is in the Critical Reasoning guide.

Verbal: Reading Comprehension

A passage of about 200–350 words with three or four questions. Here is a passage from our bank with two of its questions.

Behavioral fever in cold-blooded animals

For much of the twentieth century, fever was widely regarded as a mere by-product of infection, a sign that the body’s temperature regulation had been disrupted rather than a defense in its own right. Because a sustained rise in body temperature is metabolically expensive for mammals and birds, many physiologists doubted that natural selection would have favored such a costly response unless it conferred a substantial benefit, and they saw little evidence of one.

Studies of ectotherms, animals such as lizards and fish that cannot generate much heat internally, have complicated this view. When infected with bacteria, several such species move to warmer parts of their surroundings and keep their body temperature elevated for days, a pattern researchers call behavioral fever. In one series of experiments, infected lizards that were prevented from reaching warmer areas died at markedly higher rates than infected lizards that were allowed to warm themselves.

To some researchers, these findings show that fever is an ancient defense, inherited across vertebrate lineages, that predates the internal heating of mammals and birds. Others caution that the experiments establish only that warmth helps animals survive certain infections, not how it does so: higher temperatures might slow the pathogen, strengthen the host’s immune cells, or both. Still, the fact that animals lacking internal heat production will spend effort to reach the same result makes the by-product interpretation increasingly difficult to sustain.

Question 1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

• (A) describe the physiological mechanism by which an elevated body temperature destroys the bacteria that infect lizards and fish
• (B) present evidence that challenges a long-standing interpretation of fever while noting a question that remains open
• (C) argue that ectotherms such as lizards and fish have more effective defenses against bacterial infection than mammals and birds do
• (D) explain why a sustained rise in body temperature is metabolically costly for mammals and birds, which generate heat internally
• (E) demonstrate that behavioral fever arose independently in several vertebrate lineages, including lizards and fish

Question 2. The author mentions that a sustained rise in body temperature is metabolically expensive (first paragraph) most probably in order to

• (A) explain why some physiologists doubted that fever is a useful defense
• (B) suggest that ectotherms avoid fever because they cannot afford its cost
• (C) show that fever is more costly for ectotherms than it is for mammals
• (D) provide evidence that fever is an ancient defense shared by many vertebrates
• (E) identify the means by which warmth slows the growth of a pathogen

Answer

Question 1: B. Paragraph 1 gives the old view (fever is a by-product), paragraph 2 brings evidence against it, and paragraph 3 says the old view is hard to sustain but the mechanism is still unknown. B covers both the challenge and the open question. D is true but covers only one sentence; E reverses the “inherited across lineages” claim.

Question 2: A. The cost is the reason physiologists doubted that selection would favour fever without a clear benefit. D belongs to paragraph 3, which rests on the lizard and fish studies, not on the cost.

Data Insights: Table Analysis

A sortable table and three statements, each marked True or False (or Yes/No). On the exam you can sort by any column, which you will want to do here.

The table shows average weekday figures last month for eight routes run by a bus operator in Montevideo.

For each statement, select True if it is true based on the information provided; otherwise, select False.

1. The route with the most trips per weekday also carries the most passengers per weekday.
2. Every route longer than 15 kilometers has an on-time rate below 85 percent.
3. The median length of the eight routes is between 13 and 15 kilometers.

Answer

False, False, True. (1) Route 8 has the most trips and carries 120 × 30 = 3,600 passengers a day, but Route 2 carries 96 × 38 = 3,648. (2) Route 14 is 15.2 km long and 88% on time, so the statement fails; it is the route that is easy to miss. (3) Sorted lengths: 7.8, 9.4, 12.5, 13.6, 15.2, 18, 22.6, 26. The median is (13.6 + 15.2)/2 = 14.4 km.

Data Insights: Graphics Interpretation

A chart and a sentence with two drop-down menus. On the exam you see a chart; here are its data.

The graph shows the number of visitors to a science museum in each of the first six months of last year.

Complete the sentence: “The number of visitors in June was [2.5 times / 2.75 times / 3 times / 3.5 times] the number in January, and the greatest percent increase from one month to the next was from [January to February / April to May / May to June].”

Answer

2.75 times; April to May. 66/24 = 2.75. Percent increases: January to February 6/24 = 25%, February to March 6/30 = 20%, March to April is a fall, April to May 15/30 = 50%, May to June 21/45 ≈ 46.7%. The trap is May to June: it has the largest increase in visitors (21 thousand) but starts from a bigger base.

Data Insights: Two-Part Analysis

One list of options and two columns; you choose one option for each column. The same option can sometimes be right for both.

A theater in Valletta sold adult tickets at $15 each and child tickets at $9 each for a Sunday matinee. It sold 40 tickets in all, for a total of $468.

Select for Adult tickets and for Child tickets numbers that are jointly consistent with the conditions. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Options: 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 26

Answer

Adult tickets: 18; child tickets: 22. With a adult tickets, 15a + 9(40 − a) = 468, so 6a + 360 = 468 and a = 18; then 40 − 18 = 22 child tickets. Check: 15 × 18 + 9 × 22 = 270 + 198 = 468. The trap is 22 adult and 18 child: the total is still 40 tickets, but the revenue would be $492.

Data Insights: Multi-Source Reasoning

Two or three tabs of text, tables or charts, and three questions on the set (here, one of them). A question is either a normal five-choice question or three Yes/No rows.

Tab 1, Pricing memo. From 1 April, Veldhaven’s bike-share scheme offers three ways to pay. Pay-as-you-go riders pay an unlock fee of €1.00 for each ride plus €0.20 per minute. A day pass costs €6.00 and covers unlimited rides on one calendar day, but each ride longer than 30 minutes costs €0.15 for every minute beyond 30. Members pay an annual fee of €60.00 and then €0.10 per minute on every ride, with no unlock fee. When the membership was designed, the scheme’s planners expected the average member to take 12 rides a month, with an average ride length of 18 minutes.

Tab 2, April ride data.

Based on the April data, what was the total revenue from pay-as-you-go rides in April?

(A) €20,000 (B) €32,000 (C) €60,000 (D) €80,000 (E) €120,000

Answer

D. An average pay-as-you-go ride costs 1.00 + 0.20 × 15 = €4.00, and there were 20,000 rides: 20,000 × 4 = €80,000. Using 8,000 riders instead of 20,000 rides gives the trap answer B; counting only unlock fees gives A.

Where to practise more

• Official free practice: GMAC’s free starter materials on mba.com include Official Practice Exams 1 and 2: full-length, adaptive and scored like the real test. Take one early to get a baseline and save the second for the last weeks.
• Official paid material: the Official Guide and the Quant, Verbal and Data Insights reviews on mba.com.
• Guides by format: for the logic behind two of the most distinctive formats, read our guides to Data Sufficiency and Critical Reasoning.

Keep an error log as you practise: for every miss, note the format and why the wrong answer tempted you. Its patterns tell you what to study next better than a raw score.

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