GMAT to add new integrated reasoning section

Global Business School Exam to Introduce Innovative New Questions in June 2012

Video link - http://gmac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=67

The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will add an innovative new section designed to measure people’s ability to evaluate information from multiple sources. The new integrated reasoning section, scheduled for introduction in June 2012, will provide business schools with a window into how prospective students respond to the kinds of complex challenges they will encounter as managers in today’s information-rich business environment.

The coming enhancements to the GMAT exam stem from multiple surveys of business school faculty conducted during the past four years by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), owners of the exam.  GMAC solicits input from faculty as a regular part of its commitment to continuously improving the GMAT exam.  The Council unveiled the changes to the exam here today at its Annual Industry Conference, the largest gathering of graduate business school professionals in the world.

The integrated reasoning portion of the GMAT will capitalize on innovations in technology and assessments and feature questions that further enhance the validity of the test. These questions include information from multiple sources, such as charts, graphs, and spreadsheets. Examinees will be asked to analyze information, draw conclusions and discern relationships between data points, just as they must do in business school.

“The new integrated reasoning section of the GMAT will be a microcosm of today’s b-school classroom,” said Dave Wilson, president and CEO of GMAC. “These questions will provide critical intelligence to schools about the ability of prospective students to make sound decisions by evaluating, assimilating or extrapolating data.” 

The overall length of the GMAT exam (three and a half hours) will not change.   The new integrated reasoning section will be 30 minutes long and replace one of two essays that are part of the GMAT’s analytical writing section. Admissions officers have stated and GMAC research has shown that performance on the essays is closely aligned, making a single essay acceptable for predicting performance.

The GMAT exam’s verbal and quantitative sections will not change. As a result, when the new section is introduced in June 2012, tests will be scored on the same 200–800 scale used today. Test takers will receive a separate score for the essay—as they do now—and another distinct score on the new integrated reasoning section.

About GMAC
The Graduate Management Admission Council® (www.gmac.com) is a nonprofit education organization of leading graduate business schools worldwide dedicated to creating access to and disseminating information about graduate management education. GMAC is based in McLean, Virginia, and has a European office in London. The GMAT® exam was created in 1954 and is used by nearly 5,000 graduate management programs at approximately 1,900 business schools around the world to assess applicants. The GMAT—the only standardized test designed expressly for graduate business and management programs worldwide—is continuously available at more than 530 test centers in over 111 countries. More information about the GMAT exam is available at www.mba.com.