GMAT Focus Edition - Everything You Need to Know

GMAC has released some sample questions for GMAT Focus Ed. Click here to access the same.

P.S. - Nothing out of the world ; these are recycled GMAT Prep / OG Questions.

with this release of questions , now it can concluded that gmat focus edition is just a shorter version of existing format with removal of SC and few topics in quant..
now since all sections are familiar the thing that would be interesting to know how many data insights questions can one expect in the exam , will it remain same as 12 in existing IR or less,..

The information has been available for quite some time now

Quantitative Reasoning: 21 questions, 45 minutes

Verbal Reasoning: 23 questions, 45 minutes

Data Insights: 20 questions, 45 minutes

For more details check this link.

By how many data insights questions I meant how many IR and DS questions can be expected or say the split... I hope you have an answer to this as well.. gmatophobia

Finally, a straight answer from GMAC on this question!

Despite this clear language, I believe there is a strong chance that GMAC will allow test-takers who have already used all their 8 lifetime attempts on the "classic" GMAT at least one more attempt at the new GMAT Focus, at least for a limited time—which again, is exactly what happened when the GMAT online was introduced in 2020: students and tutors were invited to take the new GMAT format once, without affecting their lifetime limits.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is back!
The GMAT Official Guide 2023-2024 is coming June 7th

4 Books:

• General guide
• Quant guide
• Verbal guide
• Data insights guide

Bundle Link on Amazon.com
Individual OG 2023-2024






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I hope that questions in this new release are new( unseen) and not repeat questions from old OG's...

Posted from my mobile device

I have a bad feeling about it... but let's see

Great news, and finally! Thanks for sharing. Very late (1 year late, to be exact) is certainly better than never.

Question: on page 5 (#3 on the below list) of the new GMAT Official Guide 2023-2024, it says "The Data Insights section gives questions of different types in random order."

Is this GMAC's roundabout way of telling us that the new DI section will NOT be adaptive, in the same way that the current Integrated Reasoning section is not adaptive? Or is there still a chance that Data Insights will also be adaptive, like the current (and future) Quantitative and Verbal sections?



UPDATE: On page 215 of the new Official Guide, GMAC confirms very clearly that the new Data Insights section is NOT adaptive: "Unlike the GMAT exam's Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning sections, the Data Insights section is not computer adaptive."

^ There you have it, folks.

HBS has just announced that HBS will NOT be using GMAT Focus for R1 or R2 Admissions. HBS will not accept GMAT Focus this year


https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/Page ... mat-policy

P.S. First shot at the GMAT Focus
And I think some schools may follow suit.... except Kellogg. They try to be the opposite of HBS

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Will be interesting to see what schools with 3 or more rounds may do.

So far, GMAC has offered various reasons as to why it is removing AWA and Sentence Correction (test components that were deemed relevant for decades) from the GMAT Focus, but perhaps none is more obvious and direct than this: it saw a marketing opportunity. By keeping the rest of the GMAT content the same, but removing some parts, the required prep time has been reduced—at least in theory, allowing the GMAT to better compete with the GRE:


Source: Amazon.com

By removing AWA, SC and Geometry (no word yet on why Geometry has been removed), GMAC can also benefit in other ways, such as printing an Official Guide with 40% fewer pages. It's a win-win situation: on the surface, GMAC appears to have produced a new exam with new question types—but all it has actually done is added the word "Focus" to the exam's title, moved Data Sufficiency questions into the Integrated Reasoning section / renamed the section to "Data Insights" and slightly tweaked DS to include "logic-based" questions, changed the scoring / percentiles, shortened the test, and removed selected content. (Despite the shorter exam length, the price of the GMAT Focus will remain the same, of course.)

In other words: exactly almost none of the question types on the new GMAT Focus are actually new. Classic GMAC.

Technically, I would agree that the GMAT Focus can be prepared for in "just 6 weeks"—the question is whether it should. In many cases, 3-6 months (the usual preparation timeline for the "classic" GMAT) would still make more sense.

Yes, AWA, SC, and Geometry are disappearing from the exam, but that extra preparation time should now go toward preparing for the Data Insights section—which, whether or not it's adaptive, will be part of the 205-805 composite score conversion.

Hello Everyone,

We attended the GMAC event in New Delhi yesterday and following are some additional insights we gained. We are putting here, only the "additional" points, not already covered in the discussions on this thread or not revealed on GMAC's official website.

Disclaimer:
1/ Some of the revelations here are significant; we duly re-confirmed the needful with the GMAC officials at the event.
2/ The purpose of this post is to simply share information and to help the community; the purpose is not to propagate speculations but to settle some .

THE BIGGEST NEWS: DS questions are going to be not just "quant-based" but also "logic-based"; these are going to be new types, not seen earlier on the GMAT.
- Data Insights (DI) section to have 20% to 40% DS questions.
--Roughly half the DS questions are going to be logic-based while the other ~half will continue to be quant-based.
- Overall, the DI section to have 20-30% Graphics Interpretation questions, 10-20% Multi-Source Reasoning questions, 10-20% Table Analysis questions, 10-20% Two-Part Analysis questions, and 20-40% Data Sufficiency questions.
- DI section is also adaptive (at item level).

Next big news: The new format allows six section orders.
- Hence, the three sections can be taken in any of the (3! = 6) possible orders.
- The difficulty level of the first few questions of one section would depend on one's performance on the previous section(s).
-- Hence, what section order you decide may require greater deliberation!
--- Very interesting!!

Regarding the option to change up to 3 responses at the end of a section:
- Three answers can be changed at the end of each section.
-- Each change counts; hence, if you change an answer to the same question three times, your all changes are exhausted.
-- One can bookmark questions for review at the end of a section; however, this is only to help a candidate identify such questions.
--- One can change answer to any question, irrespective of whether the question was bookmarked.

Further points:
- Only one, ten-minute break is allowed; one can decide this during the test (hence, after completing the first section, one can decide whether one wants to use the lone break then or take it after the second section).
-- Rest, one continues to get one-minute instructions screen before commencement of a new section.
- The limit on the number of attempts applies across formats.
- The 100th percentile does mean that the scorer lies in the top 0.5% performers.
-- Sidenote: I had to exchange some thoughts to get this confirmed (and the officials accepted the potential confusion; they suggested that they will make this clearer in their further literature).
- Calculator would be available only on the DI section.
- We requested that GMAC put efforts to ensure that the b-schools (and student community) understand that ~655 is the new 700 and ~705 is the new 760 to avoid psychological benchmarks attached with such scores over so many years; they confirmed that they are working in that direction.
- The score reports in practice exams to have better analytics.
- The paid practice tests can be reset only once; post one reset, the system would require re-payment.
- Like always, the latest official material being released will include significant repeat questions from earlier guides.

An informal takeaway: on my insistence that the test being available in "Q4" suggests a very broad window, an official suggested that the exact date (of the practical administration of GMAT Focus) will be revealed in August first week.

We hope this helps.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hi ExpertsGlobal5,

Great news and thanks for sharing! We now know that there are 6 possible section orders—with the difficulty level of prior sections affecting one's initial difficulty level on sections 2 and 3 of the GMAT Focus (if I understand what you are saying correctly).

Could you please deliberate on this a bit? I have heard that the EA (Executive Assessment) is scored in a similar way, but have not yet had this confirmed by anyone. Do the difficulty levels of 1st and the 2nd sections equally affect the starting difficulty level of the 3rd section, as most would assume? Thanks.

Well, I'm sure everyone is going to be obsessed with examining / mastering these new "logic-based" DS questions—since they are really the only part of the GMAT Focus that isn't recycled from the classic GMAT.

The takeaway: always start with your best section(s)!

Thanks.

Sure -

So, if you performed well on a section, the next section would start with questions of a relatively higher difficulty level (than what it would have, if you did not perform well); this applies only to the first few questions (as soon, your performance on the current section would determine the difficulty of the questions you get next).

Hence,

- The start of the second section is influenced by one's performance in the first section.
- The start of the third section is influenced by one's performance in the first two sections.

I hope this clarifies.

Thank you for your quick response. However, I meant to be more specific with my question: are the difficulty levels of the 1st and 2nd sections weighted equally in determining the initial difficulty of the 3rd section—or does the 1st section matter the most?

(I presume that the 2nd section would not be weighted more strongly than the 1st.)

I didn't ask that question (as you know how GMAC is always sensitive about not revealing too much on matters of their scoring).

Understanding that all 3 sections have equal weightage, I believe the "overall" performance would determine the difficulty of the third section and no one section would have a higher weightage.

Thanks.