The GMAT is actually a battery of 3 tests administered in one sitting: a Quant Reasoning test, a Verbal Reasoning test, and a Data Interpretation test. In late 2023, it was revised to become the GMAT Focus exam. It used to contain a short Essay response, but as of late 2023, the essay section as been dropped. The newly revised GMAT Focus exam is now scored on a scale of 205 to 805 (formerly from 200 to 800) and is used for admission to MBA programs and business schools (mostly in the US, but sometimes at foreign schools as well).
It is a computer adaptive test (CAT), which means that the difficulty of the questions will vary depending on your performance on previous questions. This question-adaptive format means that almost everyone (even the most advanced students) will find it challenging, since the computer is essentially zeroing in on your level of skill and challenging you there. ******It also means that you cannot rely on ANY TEST-TAKING STRATEGY that relies on skipping around the questions as much (though you are allowed to return to a few questions now, which was not something the GMAT previously allowed).******
On the Quantitative portion of the GMAT, you will have to work through an array of questions that will require a mastery of knowledge and skills from mathematical domains such as Number properties, Algebra, Coordinate geometry, Functions, Statistics, etc. These will be multiple choice questions designed to test your Quantitative Reasoning skills. There used to be a fair bit of Geometry as well, but the newly revised test has very little of it now.
On the Verbal portion of the GMAT, you will have to read both long and short passages and answer the accompanying questions. Prior to late 2023, you also had to contend with Sentence Correction questions (for which one had to learn the rules of grammar and a fair number of idiomatic expressions), but this has been removed from the newly revised test. The long reading passages will contain questions that measure your Reading Comprehension by testing your ability to identify such things as the main idea of a passage, the primary purpose of a passage, the tone/attitude of the author, what details are mentioned in the passage, etc. The short reading passages have questions that pertain more to Logical Reasoning (called Critical Reasoning on the GMAT, though they are the same Logical Reasoning items as found on the LSAT and GRE). These latter questions deal more with making logical inferences from facts as well as analyzing written arguments to determine how to identify their underlying assumptions, how to strengthen them, how to weaken them, etc.
The Data portion of the GMAT Focus now combines the old Integrated Reasoning (IR) section with the famous Data Sufficiency questions that used to appear on the Quant portion of the test. This is a fairly unique section that integrates Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Interpretation.
Like the GRE and LSAT, this is a very rigorous exam that requires months of diligent study and training. For more help on the GMAT, reach out for a free consultation.
