What is the GMAT Focus Edition? Everything You Need to Know
On March 8th, 2023, the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) announced the biggest changes to the GMAT since the inception of the test in 1954.
The new version of the GMAT is being called the “GMAT Focus Edition” and will be rolled out “later this year.”
Our guess is that the new test version will not be available before the middle of the year, but we will update this page as more information becomes available.
The current version of the GMAT will be available through “early 2024,” and we are recommending that most students study for this version through the 2nd round of the upcoming application cycle.
GMAT Focus Edition — Quick Facts
At this point, there is much that is not known about these changes, but here is what we know for sure from MBA.com about the GMAT Focus Edition:
- There will now be three 45-minute sections and the separate 30-minute AWA and IR sections will be removed
- The three sections will be Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights (new section similar to the previous IR section)
- These changes reduce testing time from 3 hrs and 7 minutes to 2 hrs and 15 minutes
- Within each section, you will be able to flag questions and then go back and change 3 question responses before the end of that section time
What Other Changes Do We Expect?
Here is what is likely true but not officially confirmed (this is based on screenshots from the preview option at Amazon of the 2023-24 Official Guide):
- Sentence Correction will be removed from the GMAT Focus Edition and the Verbal Reasoning section will contain exclusively Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions, with some possible changes to the “flavor” of the Critical Reasoning questions.
- Geometry will be removed as a quant content area and likely there will be some other minor changes to other quant content areas being tested.
- The Quantitative Reasoning section will still contain Problem Solving questions and perhaps Data Sufficiency questions (which might be used only in the Data Insights section in the Focus Edition).
Our Recommendation for Students
With any change like this, it is beneficial to wait a little while and gain more information from those who have taken the new test and to see what new resources become available for preparation.
Likely, there will be some delays and/or issues with the new version upon its inception.
For sure, it will be a confusing 12 months as the new test is rolled out and the current version continues to be administered.
We advise the following to our current students and those who are interested in signing up:
- Prepare for the current version through the end of this year with a few caveats noted below. We will continue for now with our curriculum for the current version of the test and roll out a new version with an updated live and on-demand course to be taught by our Director of Tutoring, Hailey Cusimano. The new version will remove SC and Geometry and add in a new Data Insights lesson.
- If you are preparing for the current version of the GMAT and the new GMAT Focus Edition test becomes available, you can always make the shift to the Focus Edition.
- We would recommend this move if you are really struggling with SC (usually a strength with our students) or if you are just not reaching your score goal on the current version.
- Almost all of your prep will be relevant but you can then pivot away from SC and Geo, and add in preparation for the Data Insights section.
- Think of the GMAT Focus Edition as a backup plan for those applying in the upcoming cycle.
- As we move into 2024, we will phase out our curriculum for the current test version and recommend that most people prepare for the GMAT Focus Edition with our updated curriculum, since the majority of applicants in the following year cycle will use that exam.
At this point, we do not know anything about the scoring scale for the new edition or how MBA programs will use the two different exam versions for their application decisions.
What we can say confidently is that this shift in the exam favors the style of preparation that we have always used in our curriculum: strategic and analytical preparation vs. content-based preparation. The goal of the GMAT has always been to assess higher-order thinking, and this new Focus Edition version will shift even more from assessing “who knows things” to “who thinks the right way” to succeed in business school.
