Jose Ferreira Shares His View on the GMAT’s New Integrated Reasoning Format

by , Jul 1, 2010

When it comes down to it, Integrated Reasoning, the new GMAT section (coming in 2012), is Critical Reasoning meets MBA math. It's what the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) wishes the Critical Reasoning question type could have been--except back when CR was created, the necessary technology wasn't available.

So what's "MBA math?" Data analysis, statistics, and probability. MBA programs have long emphasized all three of these in their first semester curricula--in addition to complaining that many matriculating students lack basic competence in each. (The new Integrated Reasoning section came about in part from the results of 4 years of surveys given to b-school faculty members.) In the past, schools have addressed these deficiencies by instituting mandatory summer "math camps" for incoming students, and/or offering first semester courses with names like Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. (At least, that's what it was called back when I was a student at HBS.) These crash courses coveryou guessed itdata analysis, stats, and probability.

The GMAT began testing simple probability and statistics a few years ago. But testing these kinds of concepts out of context is difficult. Integrated Reasoning uses innovations in technology and testing to add the context, thereby assessing statistics and probability in a more real-world setting.

It will be interesting to see how MBA programs and the GMAC will address the fact that a large number of students who apply to business school have little or no experience with these kind of tasksand little to no knowledge of how to use spreadsheets. (Finance and consulting types are the exception). The new GMAT section will have it's own score. It's possible that admissions boards will still rely on the 200 800 Verbal/Quant score as their main admissions criterion, and use the separate Integrated Reasoning score as a flagging mechanism for students in need of extra helpkind of like a mini AP Test for MBA math, so students who do well can place out of math camp. Or perhaps the Integrated Reasoning score will be weighted along with the 200 800 in the decision-making process. If that's the case, awkward questions of how much to weight each score are inevitable; different schools will undoubtedly take different approaches. (Just what the process needsless transparency!)

As for the question of how to prepare for Integrated Reasoninglet me just say that Im looking forward to taking a shot at it! As someone who has "cracked" a fair number of test questions, my experience is that the more rigidly structured a question type, the more it lends itself to strategic destruction. Any system with formulaic rules in it can be broken using omissions and weak spots in these rules. Back in the '90s, my strategies forced ETS to abandon a new section on the GRE called Pattern ID. They conceded that I broke the code, so we are removing the questions from the test. Pattern ID's undoing was the fact that it was formula-driven and highly structured. Integrated Reasoning seems to share those qualities, and I'm excited to find some fun tricks to "break the code" on this new GMAT section as well!

Over at Knewton, our math team has been hard at work crafting a sample Integrated Reasoning question to whet your appetite for 2012! Check it out and see how you do!