The Graduate Management Admission Test — the dominant test for MBA admissions, will soon have a new section, designed to test the ability of would-be business students to analyze multiple kinds of information.
The new "integrated reasoning" questions will present test-takers with a spreadsheet, a table, text and other information and then ask either single or multiple questions. While the answers will be multiple choice, there will likely be multiple correct answers, with test-takers asked to list all correct answers. These new questions will replace one of the two GMAT essays and will be reported in a new score, while preserving existing scores for the essay and the verbal-quantitative total. The new section will be added in 2012.
The reason that the GMAT was open to a challenge is that it is not a test specific to business schools, but rather features general verbal, quantitative and writing sections. While designed to test someone's ability to succeed in a business program, the test itself doesn't stress economics or accounting or any specific business school skill set or at least that has been the case until now.
As an example of the kind of questions that might be on the test, the students might receive a spreadsheet with data on the number of passengers and flights in and out of 21 airports, and then be asked to respond to a series of statements about the data and/or other information with regard to the various airports. Many of the questions may not be factual, but may be about trade-offs raised by certain choices.
The new questions will take 30 minutes and with the elimination of the essay, will not add to the time of the test (currently 3.5 hours).
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