The New GMAT Focus Edition: What You Need to Know About the GMAT Changes
In March 2023, GMAC announced an overhaul of the GMAT exam, known as the new GMAT Focus Edition. Naturally, this sent the GMAT interwebs into a tizzy, and we've received a blizzard of questions and comments about the GMAT changes since then.
The GMAT Focus Edition became available beginning on November 7, 2023, and the “old” GMAT was phased out on February 1, 2024. Moving forward, the GMAT Focus Edition will be the only available version of the GMAT.
In all honesty, there’s very little reason to overreact to the changes to the GMAT exam. The GMAT Focus Edition is shorter than its predecessor, and changes to the content are relatively small.
That said, the changes to the GMAT format can feel jarring at first, and here are answers to all of the questions that we’ve been asked about it.
Q: Why did GMAC create a new version of the GMAT?
A: In theory, it’s because the new version is better for test-takers: it’s shorter, some key elements (Sentence Correction, essay-writing, and geometry) have been removed, and the new GMAT Focus Edition includes a better version of the Enhanced Score Report for free. GMAC also consulted business schools to make sure that the new exam is focused (see what I did there?) on the skills that are the most relevant in the admissions process.
In practice, I can’t help but think that the new GMAT Focus Edition is at least partly a reaction to the fact that far fewer people are taking the GMAT than they were five years ago. Plenty of MBA applicants have been choosing the GRE over the GMAT, for reasons that we explain in this GRE vs. GMAT article and video, and the total number of GMAT exams taken worldwide dropped nearly 50% from 2018 to 2022.
I can’t blame GMAC one bit for trying to regain a bit of market share by making the new GMAT format more appealing for test-takers. Frankly, it’s good for everybody involved: the changes mostly benefit test-takers, the new GMAT Focus is more specifically designed for business school admissions than the “classic” GMAT… and if the new GMAT helps GMAC achieve a rebound in the number of exams taken, that’s great.
Q: What are the main differences between the GMAT Focus Edition and the “old” GMAT?
A: There are a bunch of changes in the new GMAT, but here are the main ones:
The new GMAT Focus Edition is shorter than the old GMAT. The new GMAT has three 45-minute sections, so the total testing time will be about two hours and 15 minutes. That’s lovely: the new GMAT is nearly an hour shorter than its predecessor.
AWA is not part of the new GMAT Focus Edition. That’s a half-hour of your life you’ll get back. Huzzah!
The new Quantitative Reasoning section does not include geometry or Data Sufficiency. Geometry isn’t part of the new exam at all; Data Sufficiency will now be included in the new Data Insights Section.
Sentence Correction is not part of the new GMAT Focus Edition. So the new, 45-minute Verbal Reasoning section will consist entirely of Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension.
Data Insights – a mashup of Integrated Reasoning and Data Sufficiency – counts toward your composite score on the new GMAT Focus Edition. The “new” Data Insights section does not include any new question types – just Data Sufficiency and the question styles that appeared on the old Integrated Reasoning section. But the Data Insights section counts toward your composite score, and is weighted equally with the quant and verbal sections.
On the new GMAT, your composite score is on a scale from 205-805. Why did GMAC tweak the score scale slightly? Well, anybody looking at the score will immediately know whether you took the old GMAT (if the score ends with a zero) or the new GMAT Focus Edition (if your score ends with a five). Cool.
The new Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights sections are graded on a scale from 60-90. This is a good thing. The old quant and verbal section scores were odd – both were technically on a scale from 1-51, but the score distributions were radically different, and test-takers struggled to understand how to compare the two scores. With the new scale, section scores on the GMAT Focus Edition are easier to interpret.
You can change up to three answers per section on the new GMAT Focus Edition. This is obviously a really, really nice thing for test-takers. You can skip questions (“bail if you flail”, as one of our tutors likes to say) that give you trouble, and then circle back to them if you have extra time at the end of the section.
The new GMAT includes a better version of the Enhanced Score Report, and it’s FREE.
So there’s a lot going on here. But for the most part, the changes are good for test-takers: you’ll probably study a little bit less, and spend less time in the testing room. You’ll also get better data than you would have with the “old” GMAT. That’s all lovely.
Q: Are the sections the same on the new GMAT Focus Edition?
A: Not exactly. Here’s the deal:
Quantitative Reasoning: the new GMAT Focus Edition doesn’t include geometry or Data Sufficiency questions, and the section is shorter than on the old GMAT. The quant section of the new GMAT Focus Edition includes 21 Problem Solving questions in 45 minutes.
Verbal Reasoning: Sentence Correction isn’t included in the new GMAT Focus Edition, so the new verbal section consists of a total of 23 Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions in 45 minutes.
Data Insights (formerly Integrated Reasoning): the GMAT Focus Edition features a new-sounding section called Data Insights, which consists entirely of the old Integrated Reasoning question types, mixed with Data Sufficiency. You’ll see 20 Data Insights questions on this section, with 45 minutes to finish them. (Here’s our advice on how to approach the GMAT Data Insights section.)
The Analytical Writing Assessment task is not included in the new GMAT Focus Edition.
Notice that none of these sections include any fundamentally new question types. The bottom line is that the changes aren’t so radical in the end: the new GMAT Focus Edition is a little bit less time pressured than the old version, and all of the question formats are recycled from the previous version of the GMAT.
One small caveat: now that Data Sufficiency is part of the Data Insights section, it no longer includes “pure quant” questions. Instead, Data Sufficiency questions focus more on your ability to process data and information in general, and “real-world” word problems feature prominently in GMAT Focus Data Sufficiency questions.
In other words, you can think of Data Sufficiency as less quant-heavy and a bit more logic-based than the old versions of these questions. Here’s more on how to approach Data Sufficiency on the GMAT Focus Edition:
Q: How long is the new version of the GMAT exam?
A: The new GMAT Focus Edition consists of three 45-minute sections, with one optional 10-minute break. So you’ll have a total of 2 hours and 15 minutes of testing time.
Q: Can I choose my own section order on the new GMAT Focus Edition?
A: Yup! You can do the three sections (Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights) in any order you’d like.
Q: Will the new GMAT Focus exam be harder than the old GMAT?
A: Fundamentally, no: the new GMAT Focus Edition doesn’t introduce any new question types or topics. And other than the fact that geometry, Sentence Correction, and AWA have disappeared, there’s absolutely no reason to think that the questions themselves are substantially different than in the old GMAT.
Again: a few things were removed from the GMAT, and everything else was just reshuffled. In terms of the test’s content, the changes aren’t actually all that dramatic.
Also, if you hear any wacky rumors that GMAC is making the questions harder, please ignore those rumors. Every time GMAC makes even the slightest tweak to the exam, goofballs on the internet decide that the test is getting radically harder, and that simply isn’t how things work.
So if you hear any silliness about the questions fundamentally changing, please ignore the noise. Other than the disappearance of geometry, Sentence Correction, and AWA — and the fact that Data Sufficiency isn’t quite as math-heavy as it used to be — the questions are basically the same as always.
Q: What the heck is this new Data Insights section?
A: None of the question types on the “new” Data Insights section are actually new. Data Insights just adds Data Sufficiency questions – which have always been part of the quant section – to the existing Integrated Reasoning Questions. The Data Sufficiency questions generally aren’t quite as math-heavy as their predecessors on the “old” version of the GMAT, and instead focus on your ability to process data and information logically. But for most test-takers, that shift is unlikely to be jarring in any way.
So again, you can think of the new GMAT Focus Edition – and the Data Insights section in particular – as a reconfiguration of existing questions. But it’s not an overhaul.
Don’t worry: if you’re itchy to learn more about how to conquer this new test section, we have you covered here with a complete series of Data Insights videos.
Need an overview of how to approach the GMAT Data Insights section in general? Check out this video as a starting point:
Q: Is there still a written essay on the new GMAT Focus Edition?
A: Nope! The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) – which consisted of a 30-minute essay-writing task – is disappearing. You’re happy, right?
Q: Can you change answers on the new version of the GMAT?
A: Yup! On the new GMAT Focus Edition, you can mark questions and return to them later. The only catch: you can change a maximum of three answers per 45-minute section.
Q: On the new GMAT Focus Edition, does my performance on one section affect the difficulty of questions on the next section? If so, does my performance on, say, verbal affect my quant score?
A: Yes, but it’s not as big of a deal as it might sound.
Think of it this way: the GMAT’s goal is to accurately measure your ability in various areas (i.e., quantitative and verbal reasoning, or your ability to draw insights from data). Since it’s an adaptive test, the exam does its very best to give you questions that are appropriate for your skill level — harder questions if you’re really skilled in a certain section, easier questions if you aren’t.
Since there’s a positive correlation between results on the three sections — for example, high scorers on quant are, on average, more likely to score well on the other sections, too — the new GMAT Focus Edition gives you harder “starting questions” on the second and third sections if you performed well on previous sections. If you struggled on previous sections, you’ll receive easier starting questions on subsequent sections.
Here’s the punchline, though: this is very, very unlikely to have a significant impact on your score in the end. Each of the GMAT Focus Edition’s three sections has more than 20 questions on it — and in the end, your performance on those questions will determine your score on each section. We can promise that the difficulty level of the first question will barely matter at all.
Q: When is the new GMAT Focus Edition available?
A: Testing began on November 7, 2023. The last day to take the “old” version of the GMAT was on January 31, 2024.
Q: How do I improve my score on the GMAT Focus Edition?
A: As a starting point, you might want to check out this free, complete GMAT Focus video course. It’s our genuine best effort to translate our one-on-one tutoring into free YouTube videos.
Got more questions about the new GMAT? Feel free to ask us anything in the comments section of our GMAT Focus Edition videos on the GMAT Ninja YouTube channel.