GMAT more challenging with 300 new questions

Getting that coveted foreign MBA degree has become tougher with Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT), an essential rite of passage for admission to business schools globally — including Harvard, Kellog and Wharton — carrying 33% new questions. In all the five sections, 300 questions have been replaced with tougher ones, the highest being in data sufficiency. The number of questions remains unchanged at 907. 1 month back the new book has come out. Official Guide 12 and it contains many different type of question.

Globally, lakhs of students take GMAT every year for admission to over 1,900 B-schools worldwide, including a few in India. Nearly 20,000 students take the exam in India. What makes it tougher is the way the five sections have been reformatted. The reason for making it tougher, say GMAT analysts, is the increase in number of students taking the test. In the new format, the sentencecorrection section has an increased emphasis on pronoun and modifier rules, while there is reduced focus on comparisons and idiomsrelated questions. In the reading comprehension questions, the Graduate Management Admission Council — the global authority preparing the test papers — has created a balance between short and long passages. Two Biology passages have been replaced with one Social Science passage and one business-related passage. While the number of inference questions has increased significantly, general and specific questions have remained the same. “Roman numeral questions have been removed, indicating GMAT may move away from these. The GMAC spends millions of dollars on research to ensure that only the best students get into these B-schools and they are well-rounded, not just bookish or just good in language. The council keeps reinventing itself,’’ Rashmi Gowda, GMAT analyst and head of CSquare Learnings, a leading GMAT prep institute, told STOI. In the critical reasoning section, 50 questions have been replaced with 50 new ones. There’s a decrease of 19 questions in the problem-solving section. Those poor in Maths can rejoice. There is a reduction in the fraction, decimals and percentage question types. But data sufficiency has undergone the maximum change. “In all, 75 old problems have been replaced with 94 new ones. There’s been a significant reduction in Algebra-related questions and an increase in word translations.

THE CHANGES Sentence correction: 57 new questions Critical reasoning: 50 new questions Reading comprehension: 43 new questions Data sufficiency : 94 new questions Problem-solving: 56 new questions

Reference: Times of India