New Question Types on Your GMAT Exam

Question Type 1: Given an Issue (background story) and Plans A/B, you need to decide whether additional information supports Plan A or Plan B or Neither.

Question Type 2: Sort Spreadsheet. With the ability to sort a spreadsheet by any of the headings, determine among 5 statements which are TRUE statements.

Question Type 3: Before and After. Given a set of “BEFORE” data points and “AFTER” datapoints, determine what algebraic operation was used to transform these BEFORE points to AFTER points

Question Type 4: Scatterplot and Least-Squares Regression. Wow…finally the GMAT exam is diving into the ever important STATISTICS necessary in data analysis (hedge funds, valuation firms, etc all use some form of data point graphs to analyze things). It only makes sense for the GMAT to test it for business school. You’ll have to answer questions based on slopes of dashed lines, the regression line, or just outliers or particular data points.

Question Type 5: Think on Your Feet with Real Conversation. Here they make you press play on some audio clip which simulates you having a conversation with a coworker – you just listen to some reasoning or argument that he can’t seem to figure out. You then have to finish following/listening to his train of thought and be able to spot out what the flaw is in his reasoning. Talk about real life, putting you on the spot to answer the question right then and there!

Question Type 6: Pairing Choice. The question might be some sort of math question where the answer will in the form of X and Y. Though the correct answer for Y will depend on what you choose for X. And so out of the long list of about 7 for X and Y (14 total), you have to choose which combination of the two gets you to the right answer. Hmph, some more thinking required than usual!

Question Type 7: Employee Roleplay. You get shown an email that you might receive as an employee. Someone asks you follow up questions to a project as to what has been done, what hasn’t been done. You determine which of the answer choices is inferred or is supported by what’s stated in the email. Again, talk about real life issues that require real time thinking. The newer version of critical reasoning.

Question Type 8: Multiple Graph/Table/Economic Summary – after eyeballing several sources of data, they ask you a specific question that is not explicitly stated in any of the graphs/tables, but can be “figured out.” So you have to do some mental math in your head to fill in the “holes” and then use those “holes” to get at the right answer.

Question Type 9: Information and data, choose the right representative graph. Again, this question makes you “integrate” information from multiple sources.

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-Zeke Lee