By Liz Moliski

After spending much of this past weekend trying the new GMATPrep, I have better insights on the new IR section. Here is what I found:

• There are 12 questions and 10 prompts in the IR section
• There is a timing recommendation of 2:30 per question that is pretty reasonable, although you will need more time to read some prompts than to read others
• Scoring is 1 to 8, with no halfbased primarily on the number right, with no partial credit, although there seems to be some forgiveness at the top, because 0,1, 2, or 3 wrong led to a score of 8

There are also a number of significant changes to the test that aren’t specific to the IR section. Here is my summary, including my takes, on the changes:

• Improvements (relative to GMATPrep 1.0)
• Works on both PC and Mac.
• You can see old score breakdowns and average time by format (DS, PS, SC, CR, RC) any time you want
• On GMATPrep 1.0, you could never again get back to the score screen once you’ve left. (Keep reading, though, for the “taketh away” corollary to this “giveth.”)
• There’s a way to “reload” with more questions – for a small fee, of course. You can purchase “Question Pack 1,” something I wasn’t able to get to just yet.
• Some new questions, it seems—always a joy—but nothing that looked radically different from other GMAT problems that I have seen.
• Non-improvements
• Lots of the same questions in the main body that we’ve known & loved for a long time.
• They’ve made it harder to review questions you got right & wrong. This is the “taketh.”
• You can no longer leave a test open (by leaving the session “unfinished”), quit out of GMATPrep, and come back to reviewing the same test later.
• You have to leave GMATPrep running, and if you exit away from “Practice Test Review,” you can never return.
• You can still effectively pause an exam while you’re taking it, quit GMATPrep, and come back later. But when you’re reviewing, they’ve disabled the “leave session unfinished” function.
• Things that look like bugs
• If you don’t finish the IR section, the review screen crashes if you try to look at the correct answers of the IR problems that you didn’t answer
• If you skip the entire IR section, you may get a score of 0 for quant, messing up your 200-800 main score!

That’s all for now! I’ll post more on “Question Pack 1” after I try that out.

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!

Here is this week’s problem:

The expression x#y denotes the product of the consecutive multiples of 3 between x and y, inclusive. What is the sum of the exponents in the prime factorization of 21#42?

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Update, 5/7/12: We’ve added four more workshops! See the dates and register here. Hurry, before these sell out too!

Manhattan GMAT is offering a series of free online Integrated Reasoning workshops hosted by our Vice President of Academics Chris Ryan. Chris will dive deeply and provide hands-on techniques for tackling the new IR section. You do NOT want to miss this!

Below are the dates and links to where you can sign up for a workshop. Hope to see you (virtually) there!

April 14th (12-2 pm EST) – SOLD OUT
April 16th (7-9 pm EST) – SOLD OUT
April 19th (9:30-11:30 pm EST) – SOLD OUT
April 21th (12-2 pm EST) – SOLD OUT
April 23rd (7-9 pm EST)
April 26th (9:30-11:30 pm EST)
April 28th (12-2 pm EST)

By Liz Moliski

Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up to Liz’s post from Wednesday, reviewing the new GMATPrep 2.0.

Late yesterday afternoon I got an exciting email from GMAC! It said that GMAC had found and fixed what was described as a section scoring error and posted an updated version of the GMATPrep practice software for students to download.

Of course I immediately downloaded the new software in order to test it. Version 2.1 asks if you want to replace version 2.0 before it downloads, which is a nice feature, but a bit irrelevant, because of course you want the version where IR scoring works.

The big surprise is that the IR section score is on a 1-8 scale, not 1-25 as it appeared to be previously. I tried it and missed one question in one out of 12 prompts and got an 8, but when I tried it again and missed 1 question in each of 4 different multiple answer prompts, I got a 7, so it looks as though GMAC must be giving some sort of partial credit, but I won’t be positive of this until I’ve tried the test several more times. Unfortunately, you can’t complete just the IR section and get a score. You have to complete the entire test if you want scores.

After you finish the test, you can use the review screen, but beware, as soon as you exit, you will no longer have access to the questions that you answered. The software will save your scores for you though, so at least you don’t lose those.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of our new blogger Andrea Pawliczek‘s first post. You can read Part 1 here.

Let’s take an example of a critical reasoning argument that might appear on the GMAT.

Plainsboro Hospital completed a study that revealed that the majority of post-operative bacterial infections are caused by catheters. In order to reduce post-operative infections, Plainsboro Hospital decided to implement new sterilization procedures to kill bacterial on catheters before they are inserted into post-operative patients.

Real World Analysis

Take a minute to brainstorm some of the questions you might ask if you were a manager at Plainsboro hospital evaluating the proposal to implement this plan.
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By Liz Moliski

This morning I was delighted to discover a new version of GMATPrep up on the mba.com website. You have to have an mba.com account and be logged in to download it, just as before, but Mac users will be pleased because now there is a version that runs on the Mac OS (version 10.6 or greater) along with the version that runs on Windows XP, Vista, or 7.

After I downloaded and started the actual test (there are two provided, just as with the old GMATPrep) I noticed that it looks more like an actual GMAT administered at a test center than the old GMATPrep looks. It has all of the instructions and the mini-tutorials that the real test has.
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Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to introduce Manhattan GMAT instructor Andrea Pawliczek as a writer on our blog (even though she is a New England Patriots fan)! This is Part 1 of her two-part first post. Give Andrea a warm welcome in the comments!

Success on the GMAT demands many efforts: learning new skills, sharpening existing skills, and in some cases forgetting or setting aside some of the skills that we use in real-life. It is this last demand that often proves the most challenging, as a GMAT test taker must veer away from the type of thinking that has served her well to this point in life.

One such case occurs in data sufficiency problems, which ask us not to solve a problem but rather to identify when we have enough information to solve a problem. In both my professional and personal life I have been asked to solve problems on many occasions (How much will the new project cost? How many gallons of paint do I need to buy to paint the living room?). I cannot think of a real life occasion when I have specifically been asked when I have enough data to answer a question.
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Former Manhattan GMAT President Andrew Yang was featured in full-page article in Time Magazine about Andrew’s new endeavor, Venture for America! Added bonus: Manhattan GMAT gets a shout out in the first paragraph!

Below is a screen shot of the post. You can read the whole article over on Venture for America’s blog.