On March 8, 2023, GMAC announced upcoming changes to the GMAT. There will be a new version of the exam, the GMAT Focus Edition, that will be released in late 2023. The current version of the exam will end in the first half of 2024. In this article we’ll review the main changes, but we’ll add some editorial commentary based on our decades of experience with the exam and what we’ve seen with previous changes to the GMAT and other exams.
The first thing to mention is that this is an evolving landscape and not everything is known at the time of this writing (April 2023). GMAC has a page devoted to the new version of the exam, and there is a lot of useful information there. More helpfully, some good internet sleuthing has revealed more information and most of that can be found on GMAT Club.
Here are the highlights:
- The exam will be shorter: three 45 minute sections and no essay. It appears that the sections will be Quantitative, Verbal, and Data Insights. The new Data Insights section will likely be similar to the current Integrated Reasoning section.
- Some content and question types will likely be removed. This is not yet confirmed, but it seems very likely that Sentence Correction and Geometry are on the chopping block. Footnote: I feel like I am losing a child, especially with the loss of Sentence Correction. Seriously, I will mourn the loss.
- There will be some added flexibility in the exam such that test takers can go back and change a few answers to questions they already answered. More on this below…
The New Sections
The fact that the sections will be a little shorter is a minor change, really. There are much more important aspects to the new GMAT structure…
First, it seems like the new Data Insights section will likely count towards a test taker’s overall score. That is new and significant! On the GMAT that is current as of 2023, the Integrated Reasoning section essentially does not matter. It’s a separate score that does not factor into the overall score and business schools seem not to care about the score at all. This seems likely to change with the new Data Insights section.
The other major change that is hidden in the details on GMAC’s website is that Data Sufficiency seems to be moving from the Quantitative section to the Data Insights section. This means that Problem Solving questions will grow in importance since they will be the entire Quantitative section, whereas Data Sufficiency will become one question type among many in the Data Insights section. If this is correct, again this saddens me. I think Data Sufficiency is a GREAT question type, one that really preferences logic and reasoning over Math. Because of this, it’s really a better question type to assess a test taker’s reasoning and critical thinking ability because it’s less dependent on Math knowledge. At least it’s not getting cut completely, but this news, if true, still saddens me!
Change in Content and Question Types
The two big changes here are the loss of Geometry as a content area and the elimination of Sentence correction as a question type.
Regarding Geometry, on the one hand the elimination of Math that seems irrelevant to business school will probably be perceived as an obviously good change and will likely be appreciated/celebrated by would-be test takers. However!!! Most people don’t understand how important spatial reasoning is. The test writers have obviously long been aware, probably since the inception of the GMAT, that Geometry itself is virtually irrelevant to business school. But they obviously chose to include it for a reason! Geometry is a VERY good way to assess someone’s spatial reasoning ability – I see this ALL THE TIME when I help people with Geometry questions. Most people can easily learn the rules and formulas needed to get the questions right, but that is usually not the issue! It’s the application of those rules and concepts and especially the ability to think spatially when solving problems.
To repeat, this is not just important for solving Geometry problems, which are again just a WAY to assess spatial reasoning ability. The ability to visualize things in one’s mind and manipulate them is essential to thinking about non-quantitative tasks too. For example, when forming plans in one’s mind or when thinking about past, present, or future, we tend to conceptualize these things visually. Even explicitly verbal thinking can often be visual and spatial in nature. Perhaps the new Data Insights section will have question types or concepts that get at these skills in a similar way to how Geometry questions do, but I think GMAC is pandering to the crowd in eliminating them.
As for Sentence Correction, its elimination is more understandable, though I’m still going to bemoan it. I think the main factor here is just the fact that so many people who take the GMAT nowadays are non-native English speakers, and there is no question that they are at a disadvantage relative to native English speakers on SC questions.
That said, just as with Geometry questions, people misunderstand what SC questions are really about. Yes, there is grammar, but it’s not that hard to learn that grammar and most native English speakers need to learn it anyway! On a question type level, SC is mostly about logic and analytical ability! And on a “content” level, the focus is much more on clarity and meaning than on grammar. Studying for SC really teaches one how to appreciate precision in the use of language, and that tends to make people better writers and communicators. Additionally, most non-native English speakers ultimately do very well on SC, and again the process of studying for it makes them better writers and speakers, not only in English but also in their native tongue. So although it’s understandable that GMAC would eliminate Sentence Correction and mollify the large percentage of non-native English speakers who take the test, I think it’s an unfortunate loss.
Greater Flexibility on the Exam…Yay!
The main change here seems to be the ability to go back and change one’s answers to some questions. Again this seems to be an instance of pandering, and it’s a change of little consequence anyway. I get it: the GMAT is a business and GMAC needs to compete with the GRE for market share. GMAC and ETS need to keep one-upping each other to create the most user-friendly exam. I joked long ago when ETS and GMAC kept changing the number of days one needed to wait between tests that it was a race to the bottom. Soon after ETS made the waiting period between GRE attempts 21 days, GMAC shortened the waiting period for the GMAT to 16 days. At the time, I remember joking that ETS would soon announce that it’s 14 days, and then GMAC would change its waiting period to 12 days, and so on. Thankfully I was wrong! But this is the kind of competition that is at play and sometimes it leads to silly changes that lack substance but that may make the exams appear more attractive.
In the end, this new “flexibility” will probably be of very little consequence. It seems that test takers will still need to go through the entire section without going back and without skipping questions (which is how the exam is structured now), but on the new version of the GMAT test takers will be able to go back once they reach the end of the section to change up to 3 answers. I am sure this structure was chosen to maintain the “question-adaptivity” of the GMAT, whereby the exam adapts at every question (this is distinct from the GRE, which adapts after a whole section is completed).
Here, I am going to be unequivocally positive about the fact that GMAC chose to maintain question-adaptivity! I think it’s a better and more accurate way to test people than section-adaptivity. The downside of this type of testing is that you can’t skip questions or keep going back and changing answers once the test has adapted (the way you can on the GRE). However, apparently it doesn’t mess things up too much to allow people to go back AT THE END of the section and change a few answers. Obviously GMAC is doing its best to make the GMAT more user friendly, and I appreciate this. I just don’t think it’s going to make a whole lot of difference. The truth is that even on the GRE where you can skip questions entirely and go back at the end, very few people actually leverage that ability. Trust me! We often explicitly coach people on this strategy, since it’s obviously foolish to spend a lot of time on questions that may be very difficult, but skipping questions and going back is easier said than done! So it sounds like a nice addition to the new GMAT, and there obviously will be cases where people make a mistake, realize it after, and then go back and correct that mistake, but the effect will probably be minimal.
Conclusions
The changes to the GMAT expected late in 2023 are significant but perhaps less significant than people realize. If the new Data Insights section counts towards the overall score, which it seems like it will, that is a pretty big change. And the loss of Sentence Correction is also significant. Some of the other changes, however, will be less impactful.
Regardless, when exams change like this, it’s probably best not to think in terms of better or worse. There will be winners and losers, and who wins or loses just depends on the test taker. As with any standardized test, you are always being compared to others: your score is only significant in how it compares to other people’s scores! Some people are very good at Sentence Correction and the loss of that question type will hurt them whereas it will obviously benefit others. The truth, however, is that at its core the GMAT is mostly a test of reasoning, critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical ability and changes to the specific content of the test will likely not change that reality.