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  • New Question Types on Your GMAT Exam


    That’s right, new question types! At least they are only experimental for now.

    The GMAT Exam is going to change, with a new “Integrated Reasoning” section that allows you to manipulate data to derive at a correct answer. The big date to remember is JUNE 2012. About 1.5 years until judgement day!

    That means if you take the GMAT Exam (particularly Nov 19-24, 2010), you’re going to see the GMAT experimenting with several types of question formats and they are using YOU as the guinea pig. THat’s right, forget about feeling the world is unfair.

    It’s OKAY though, whatever you score on these questions won’t affect your GMAT score. It’ll just take away from your brain power for the exam – don’t let it get to you!

    The whole point of this INTEGRATED REASONING section is to test more relevant skills that business school graduates actually use. A lot of work done in corporate consulting or banking requires use of Excel and sorting tables and making interpretations/conclusions off that data. So what the GMAT folks are doing is figuring out how best to ask a question to test a student’s data interpretation skills. They have various question types they are trying out, here they are.

    ==================================================

    Possible Experimental GMAT Questions You Might See

    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.

    Follow us to hear the latest GMATPill Prep for Integrated Reasoning. We will have you thinking smart AHEAD of the curve.

    -Zeke Lee

    Table of Contents | See Pricing

    Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
    Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency

    1 comment

  • Official Guide DS#55


    #55 OG
    I got answer E fairly quickly in like 30 seconds.

    —————————————

    Guy’s net income equals his gross income minus his deductions. By what percent did Guy’s net income change on January 1, 1989, when both his gross income and his deductions increased?

    (1) Guy’s gross income increased by 4 percent on January 1, 1989
    (2) Guy’s deductions increased by 15 percent on January 1, 1989

    —————————————

    GMATPill Explanation

    Here, the question is asking for “%”. You are not given any information except that gross income and deductions increased – we do not know the exact amount nor the %.

    If we look at (1) and (2) we see that this additional information is all “%’s” The question is, can we use this new % information to get our answer which is %? Possible, but we have to check.

    Gross Income – Deductions = Net income
    Gross Income (1+4%) – Deductions(1+15%) = Net Income

    We can see that even when we take both statements together we come to an equation that has 2 unknowns to get to our Net Income – those unknowns are Gross Income or Deductions. We either need their actual exact numbers or some expression that relates the two of them. We have neither in this case – answer is E, both statements are insufficient to answer the question.

    GMATPill vs Official Guide Explanation

    Now, if you were to get an explanation from the Official Guide book itself, notice the difference in explanation depth and attack strategy compared to GMATPill’s explanation above. According to most students, the official guide explanations don’t really give them a good enough thought process to attack the question. And sometimes, it’s just difficult to follow.

    OG DS55 Official Guide DS#55

    For many students, the GMATPill explanation works a lot better.

    Table of Contents | See Pricing

    Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
    Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency


  • GMAT Prep Question Video Explanation 6 | Practice GMAT Questions


    og screenshot6 GMAT Prep Question Video Explanation 6 | Practice GMAT Questions
    Watch This:GMAT Prep Question With GMAT Pill Video Explanation

    Question:
    Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also caused erosion and very quickly deforested whole regions.

    A) Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also
    B) Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast), which gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also
    C) The systematic clearing of forests in the United States, creating farmland (especially in the Northeast) and giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also
    D) The systematic clearing of forests in the United States created farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also
    E) The systematic clearing of forests in the United States not only created farmland (especially in the Northeast), giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it

    What is this GMAT question testing?

    This question tests the infamous “Not only….but also” construction that the GMAT guys LOVE to use.

    You’re also expected to be able to identify inconsistencies in verb tenses in the context of long sentences.

    For example, notice the variations in verb tenses in the following two examples:
    “Not only did it create….but it also caused”
    “Not only does it create…but it also causes”

    The first one uses past tense verbs “did” and “caused.”
    the second one uses present tense verbs “does” and “causes.”

    But GMAT questions always try to complicate things.

    How do you know when to use
    “Not only ABC, but also XYZ”
    versus
    “Not only ABC, but it also XYZ” ?

    Well, the above is a perfect example testing you on this so check out the video above!

    And note that in answer B, it is not wrong because of the present/past tense. Past tense is actually OK here because the phrase “Not only DID….but it also DID THIS” implies a past tense to be used in the latter half of the sentence. So the past/present tense is not the issue here.

    For B, the issue is that “but also” should be “but it also” because the structure of this sentence is “Not only did it do this….but it also did this”. If we leave out the “IT”, it will somehow be a continuation of the phrase right before the comma…and in this case that wouldn’t make sense.

    The key is to figure out what the GMAT guys are testing you on and to move your eyeballs to the critical keywords ASAP so you can do the necessary analysis and choose the correct answer.

    How To Think Through This GMAT Prep Question

    Go ahead and check out the GMAT Pill video explanation of this Official Guide Question.

    Check out More Practice GMAT Questions with GMAT Pill explanations.

    Table of Contents | See Pricing

    Verbal Videos: Sentence Correction | Critical Reasoning | Reading Comprehension
    Quant Videos: Problem Solving | Data Sufficiency


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About Zeke Lee
Zeke Lee is the "98th %ile in 2 weeks" guy from Stanford who teaches MBA candidates how to think efficiently on the GMAT and how to study less, but score more... [more]
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