The New Section on the GMAT: An Analysis
The GMAC has recently announced that it will be giving students who are taking the GMAT between Nov 19 and Nov 24 a sneak peek at some of the new question formats. (If you’re taking your GMAT then, though, don’t worry – they’re experimental questions only and they come at the very end of your test, so they don’t count towards your overall score!)
What is helpful, though, is that the GMAC has also posted ten sample questions of what the new section of the GMAT might look like. Remember, these questions are not even necessarily what GMAC is going to add to the test… in 2012. Current test takers should only regard this information with interest, and perhaps a little relief.
In fact, our instructor Stacey Koprince points out that current students can totally ignore these new developments, unless they happen to be interested. Future test-takers who are thinking a couple of years out may want to take a look at the new types and decide whether they think they prefer the “old school” test questions or whether they prefer these new-fangled types; that might help them make the decision about whether to get the study ball rolling sooner. (Still plenty of time though.)
That being said, we asked Chris Ryan to examine the questions and tell us what he thought:
More Involved Questions
First of all, he pointed out, the prompts for the questions are meatier. In fact, some of them are longer than Reading Comprehension passages. In addition, they tend to blend math and verbal into one question. For instance, you might get a text discussion, a graph and a table, all at once (and graphs and tables seem to be emphasized overall.) These questions also tend to involve scenarios, like having to read an email chain between two people. This set-up means that these questions are closer to business-school case studies than anything else on the GMAT.
The format of these prompts means that the questions will take time and focus to digest, and while we don’t have any info on timing yet, Stacey surmised that the increased complexity will presumably also mean more time allotted per scenario.
New Question Types and More Variety of Topic Areas Tested
Chris also noted that the questions vary in complexity. While the verbal and quantitative portions of the GMAT have always been multiple choice answers, with only one correct answer to choose from, the questions on these new prompts can vary from filling two numbers into the blanks in a sentence, to selecting which statements from a list are valid. The questions also vary between math and verbal, though the math content is mostly familiar, except for the interpretation of graphs and tables.
In addition, many prompts require multiple steps. For instance, you might have to run a couple of sorts on a table and then count cases that fit two criteria.
Math topics observed in these new questions included decimals & percents, ratios & mixtures, statistics (new: what a “least-squares regression” line is), probability, and rates.
Verbal tasks ranged from looking up a detail (a la Reading Comp) to drawing a true inference (a la Critical Reasoning), explaining a situation, strengthening a plan, etc. This means that these questions often rework the parts of the GMAT that are tested individually and combine them into one prompt, testing Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension at the same time.
Computer Format is Integrated
In addition, these new prompts take advantage of the fact that the GMAT is taken on a computer. Tables can be sorted by columns, or computations automatically fill in as you make choices (just as formulas do in Excel). You may also encounter audio prompts, where a situation is read aloud to you, after which you answer a question similar to a Critical Reasoning question. Other features include multiple tabs, drag and drop answers, and – what may come as a relief to many of you – a calculator.
It was the calculator that was the most eye opening thing for Stacey. As she points out, it means that the GMAC has almost totally removed the focus on crunching numbers and calculations for this new section to the point that they hand you a calculator. Instead of testing quant in the way GMAT-takers currently think of it, it looks like this new section is much more about whether you can think and interpret.
Overall, while the new section is not something that current test-takers need to worry about, it’s interesting to note that the GMAC is tailoring its test to reflect the skills that future MBA students will need to know.