What You Need to Know About the New GMAT Focus Edition
a Significant Change
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has revised its exam, the most significant change since it was converted from paper to computer in 1997. The GMAT test will be cut by nearly an hour, with no writing required and all questions being multiple choice.
The GMAT Focus Edition
The redesigned GMAT will be known as the GMAT Focus Edition, and it will consist of only three 45-minute sections that can be taken in any sequence. GMAC will enable you to bookmark and modify up to three responses per section, enabling you to optimize your test-taking approach. After receiving your results in-person or online, another feature will allow you to choose the colleges you want to attend. Each official score report will only show one exam score, so you can choose whether or not to tell schools about your past scores.
The Current GMAT
The GMAT is currently divided into four parts and lasts three hours and seven minutes, excluding voluntary eight-minute breaks. The new exam will be divided into three parts and will last two hours and 25 minutes without breaks. GMAC is eliminating the 30-minute critical writing evaluation while retaining the quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning, and integrated reasoning parts.
By removing the most difficult portion of the exam, the quantitative reasoning section, you may find the test easier. That portion alone currently takes 62 minutes to finish and consists of 31 questions. GMAC says that you will now be able to study for the GMAT in a much shorter amount of time.
It’s not clear when the new test will be available, although according a recent P&Q article, a GMAC spokesperson said that the new exam will be made available later this year. The current version of the GMAT exam, however, will be available until early next year.
GMAT test-takers DECLINE
Last year's GMAT test volume reflects a 47.7% decrease from the previous year's pre-pandemic testing volume of 73,556 exams given in the United States. Even so, it does not convey the complete scope of the collapse. When comparing the newest figure for the calendar year ending July 2021 to GMAT's record high numbers in 2012, it is clear how dramatic the decline has been. In that year, 117,511 exams were administered in the United States, more than three times the number for this year. Demand in the United States has decreased every year since 2012, with the exception of 2016, when examinations increased by less than 600 tests.
The rise in gre
For many years, admissions officers relied on GMAT test traffic statistics to forecast application flows. However, that relationship has been disrupted by the pandemic, in part due to the advances made by the competitor exam GRE from Educational Testing Service. Students accepted based on GRE scores now account for more than a third of the incoming cohort at some prestigious universities. This is true at Yale, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Michigan, Duke, and Notre Dame.
The GRE has become the dominant exam at several other business institutions, including Georgetown, Washington University, Ohio State, and Pittsburgh, with more than half of all newly enrolled students taking it. This year, Harvard Business School admitted a new high proportion of GRE test takers, 29% of the Class of 2023, more than doubling the 12% enrolled only three years ago. Last fall, one in every four MBA candidates accepted to Stanford took the GRE.
Further reading: SHOULD YOU TAKE THE GMAT OR GRE AGAIN?