Executive Assessment - Integrated Reasoning Section

Question

Hi Everyone.

I have a question regarding the IR section of EA. There's very little information available on the EA and I'm especially concerned with completing the IR section in 30 minutes.

Every question requires quite a bit of reading and some calculation sometimes, and I unable seem to complete the section (12 questions) in 30 minutes.

I have several IR books that are specific to GMAT where the questions are fairly easy and straightforward but the EA GMAC practice tests are pretty difficult.

Can someone share strategies on how to ace the IR section in the Executive Assessment? Is it ok to skip a couple of questions and focus on the remaining 10?

I'm looking to get a score of around 155.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Hello dear Please read the post in the link below, I hope this post will answer your questions. https://gmatclub.com/forum/integrated-r ... 14218.html Good Luck

VidVar · Answer

Thank you so much. Appreciate it

saugandhss · Answer

Hi,

Just took the EA exam this morning. Scored 156. IR-12, VR-10, QR-14
Also, I had taken a couple of EA practice test. Scored 150 in both. These are my observations/tips,

1. IR has two subsections. Concentrate on the 1st subsection of the IR (6 questions). If you answer most of the first 6 questions right, then it is highly possible that your overall IR score will be above average (10 and up. I heard it goes up to 18 max). The questions you'll see in the second subsection will have difficulty level depending on how well you answered the question in the first subsection.
2. Multiple Source Reasoning (MSR) questions - They will be in the first subsection of IR. Total of 3 questions. Usually, they look difficult but if you practice well enough, it would be fairly easy to answer them in a reasonable amount of time (3 questions ~7.30 min incl. 3 min for reading through the multiple tabs and trying to get an idea about how the info on those tabs is interconnected). - DO NOT SKIP MSR QUESTIONS
3. Table analysis questions - Focus on the table rows and column labels to know what they're about. ~2-3 questions per table. The questions become fairly easy with practice. I would not skip them.
4. Graphical interpretation - Practice. Again, I would not skip the GI questions. 
5. Two-Part Analysis - 2-3 questions. They consume a lot of time, so I usually skipped them in the 2nd subsection.

Practice - 
While practicing questions, find the types of questions you answer correctly (strengths) and incorrectly (weaknesses), and focus on weaknesses. BUT during the exam, focus on strengths!! For me, MSR, table analysis, and GI were strengths. I focused on them during the EA exam and almost skipped/guessed-and-moved on all 2-part analysis questions.

Hope this helps.

VidVar · Answer

Thank you so much saugandhss for your detailed explanation on attacking the IR section. It instantly helped me with my practice test score.

In terms of the difficulty levels, are the questions from the practice test comparable to the actual test? Is the interface the same?

saugandhss · Answer

Glad it helped. 
Yes, the questions are quite comparable. Sometimes they may feel difficult but it may be because of the ticking timer or due to nervousness of taking the actual exam or may be because you did a better job on the earlier questions!).

Interface is somewhat similar to the practice test.
Actual exam UI has :
- no “pause” option
- almost mono color screen 
- pixelated bigger font (which is actually good - easy to read)
- you can skip/flag questions in a subsection and then at the end of each subsection, you can review all flagged/incomplete(skipped) questions (tbh you’ll hardly have time to review questions.)

Also, there will be a 10min tutorial before start of the exam which explains all navigation option, etc.

Calculator option in IR -
- you can operate the calculator using keyboard number pad (which I didn’t know when I took practice tests on my laptop).

Good luck!

Posted from my mobile device

ashwink · Answer

It looks like IR can make or break the score. I just took 2 practice tests from Offical EA pack & got a big split wrt IR score. Getting one question wrong got me at IR score of 15 and 4 questions wrong a score of 10. 
Seeing as the official mocks are pretty much the only reliable source, this would how it would be in the real exam too i guess.

SpiceRunner · Answer

I got two MSR passages, one in each of the the two blocks i.e. six questions total on the online GMAT. MSR is my achilles heel and I didn't walk away feeling too confident. I'm waiting on my score so will come back and update this post.

Primarily posting this to warn other test takers that the practice test had one MSR passage with 3 questions in the first block only. Don't assume that's going to be the case in your real test.

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Executive Assessment - Integrated Reasoning Section

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