The New Integrated Reasoning Section and Why it Matters

Today's businesses and organizations demand managers who can make sound decisions, discern patterns, and combine verbal and quantitative reasoning to solve problems. The Integrated Reasoning section measures these skills.

Why the Changes to the GMAT Exam?
The way we conduct business and the way we teach business change over time. For more than 50 years, the GMAT exam has kept pace with these changes to help schools find the right students, and help students find the right schools.

The skills being tested by the Integrated Reasoning section were identified in a survey of 740 management faculty worldwide as important for today’s incoming students. The Integrated Reasoning score will provide a new data point for schools to find the right candidates for their programs, and for you to stand out.

Integrated Reasoning is a new section designed to measure your ability to evaluate information presented in multiple formats from multiple sources – skills you already use, and skills you need to succeed in our data-rich world.

Hear What Graduate Business Admissions Professionals Are Saying About Integrated Reasoning Skills
Measuring integrated reasoning skills lets graduate management admissions professionals understand how you bring complex ideas together. Hear why this translates to success in the classroom and beyond.

Skills Measured
The 30-minute Integrated Reasoning section tests skills that a survey of 740 management faculty worldwide identified as important for you, as a prospective incoming graduate management student, to know, including:

• Synthesizing information presented in graphics, text, and numbers
• Evaluating relevant information from different sources
• Organizing information to see relationships and to solve multiple, interrelated problems
• Combining and manipulating information to solve complex problems that depend on information from one or more sources

GMAT Exam Format
The GMAT exam, now with Integrated Reasoning, will remain 3 hours, 30 minutes (four hours with breaks). The Analytical Writing Assessment has been streamlined from two 30-minute essays to one Analysis of an Argument essay. Immediately after the essay question, the Integrated Reasoning section will start. Test takers will have optional breaks before and after the Quantitative sections.