Bold Stroke: GMAT to start testing skills that matter to MBAs

In its biggest change in more than a decade, the B-school admissions test will have a new section designed to test advanced reasoning skills.

Two years from now, the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the primary gatekeeper to business school for generations of MBA students, will get its biggest makeover in more than a decade, with the addition of a new section designed to test advanced reasoning skills.

The new section will replace one of the two writing sections currently on the exam … The test’s current verbal and math sections will remain unchanged.

The coming changes to the GMAT were pressed by faculty members at business schools around the world, who told the testing organization that they wanted a section that simulated the skills students use in MBA classrooms.

“These questions are really microcosms of what goes on in the MBA classroom, and it will help schools identify students [who] will thrive in the classroom, not just survive.”

The format of the new GMAT section—which GMAC has dubbed the integrated reasoning section—will be different from anything students have encountered before on the test.

Test takers will need to interpret charts, graphs, and spreadsheets, determine the relationships among data points, and answer interactive questions that will test their analytical skills.

The changes to the exam mirror shifts in the business school classroom in recent years, as schools have changed their curriculums to emphasize problem-solving and critical thinking.”So far, with the students we’ve tested, they felt like it did simulate what they are expected to do in business school.” 

Excerpted from BusinessWeek, The GMAT Gets a Makeover, June 24, 2010
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2010/bs20100624_048037.htm

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