Edu-leaders

The format of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is going to take a new shape from next year, with the introduction of a new section called integrated reasoning (IR). Aimed at evaluating the candidate’s ability to analyse information presented in multiple formats from multiple sources, IR will have a separate score.

Skills being tested by the Integrated Reasoning section have been identified as being “important for today’s incoming students” after a survey of 740 management faculties worldwide. Further, the Integrated Reasoning score will provide a new data-point for schools looking for the right candidates for their programmes, it adds.

The way we conduct business and the way we teach business change over time. For more than 50 years, the GMAT exam has kept pace with these changes to help schools find the right students, and help students find the right schools, the GMAT website says while clarifying over the changes in the test pattern.

Vice-President of GMAT programme, Ashok Sarathy said, “However, the IR questions being researched won’t count toward the test takers’ official GMAT scores or sent to schools, and thus won’t affect the total score.”

There will be a separate score for the IR section and this will not impact the net GMAT score on a scale of 800. Hence, in the new scoring format, 800 marks will be divided between quantitative and verbal section, like earlier, while an essay and the IR section will be given a separate score. However, the total percentile will include all the scores.

The GMAT exam will remain 3 hours, 30 minutes (four hours with breaks). The Analytical Writing Assessment will be streamlined from two 30-minute essays to one Analysis of an Argument essay. Immediately after the essay question, the Integrated Reasoning section will start.

“There are some students who are very good at writing; they will now have one less essay. However I will not say that the new section will put them into bad conditions as no candidate, while appearing for GMAT, can bank on one section and can omit some other section. One has to be fully prepared,” Sarthy said.

Considering the basic mathematical logic application needed in the IR section, most will welcome the move, Sarthy added.