6 Key Takeaways from the GMAT Test Prep Summit 2013

Yesterday some members of the Aristotle Prep team had the pleasure of attending the GMAT Test Prep Summit conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) at New Delhi, India. This is the first such summit for this year and the fact that the GMAC has started off with India shows how seriously it is taking the Indian market for the exam. There were several interesting and informative nuggets of information (most of them came from Dr Larry Rudner, but of course) that we will be discussing over the next few days.
To start with, here are some key takeaways for you from this summit:

1. “The IR section will become increasingly important in the coming admission cycle so ask your students to not take it lightly” – Dr Larry Rudner

2. “The OG does not contain the best questions. Remember that the OG contains questions that have been ‘retired’ from the test. Do not over analyse the OG” – Dr Larry Rudner
Dr. Rudner’s comment is extremely crucial in light of the fact that most students and experts alike regard the OG as the be all and end all of GMAT preparation. We had a long discussion with Dr Rudner offline as well and we’ll post more of his views and our conclusions on how to use the OG, especially the explanations contained in the OG, in a comprehensive article in the next few days.

3. Experimental questions on the actual GMAT (Dr. Rudner refers to these as ‘operational’ questions btw) do not come at the beginning or towards the end of the test. They are typically scattered in the middle. Dr Rudner refused to divulge the number of these questions students are likely to see on the GMAT.

4. Dr. Rudner has finally revealed how the penalty is calculated for leaving questions unattempted at the end of a section. We’ll cover this is in a separate article subsequently but needless to say, it is a bad idea to leave questions unattempted in the test.

5. GMATPrep version 2.2 will be launched in March 2013. It will have added functionalities such as the ability to make your own practice sets by selecting high, medium, and low difficulty questions. It’ll also have a live timer function that will tell you, while you are taking the test, whether you are within the recommended time limit for a particular question or whether you have exceeded this limit.

6. Lastly and most importantly, the GMAC will be releasing a separate GMAT practice exam pack later this year that will contain an additional 2-3 full length CATs. This will be a paid product that students will have to purchase from the GMAT website. Over the years it has been a common complaint of students that the 2 full length tests that come as part of the GMATPrep are not enough and that they need more practice tests that use the actual GMAT algorithm. Finally the GMAC has heeded your views! This exam pack is expected to be release in the 3rd quarter of this year.
These were just some of the quick takeaways from the summit. We’ll be posting detailed articles on these and other important learnings from the summit over the next few days.

-Manav