GMAC has released a bit more information about their research process for the Next Generation GMAT, slated to launch in 2013. (See this story on GMAC’s web site.) Here’s the nutshell:

GMAC is currently researching what skills the Next Generation GMAT will test. An advisory group made up of representatives from 9 major business schools in the US and Europe has been meeting to review the results of several studies conducted by GMAC and to debate the skills that the GMAT should test. (See this page for a summary of the advisory group’s activities.)

GMAC has not yet finalized what the pool of skills will be, nor has it determined the format of the questions or even the scoring scale that will be used. The Next Generation GMAT may even be given in additional languages besides English! (See the FAQ for more.) All we know for now is that the new test is expected to launch in 2013.

As we said when this info first came to light, the Next Generation GMAT is so far in the future that nobody needs to worry about it right now (except, of course, for all of us here at ManhattanGMAT!). If you are curious, though, check out the above links for the word straight from GMAC’s lips.

Happy studying!

Don’t worry. It isn’t launching until 2013(!), so if you’re planning to take the test before then, you don’t have to worry about any big changes the test writers decide to introduce.

If you are curious, though, click this link to a short mention of the news in The Economist. There isn’t much info – GMAC is obviously still in the early stages of developing their “Next Generation GMAT” – but there’s some interesting discussion on trends in business school admissions.

Effective March 1st, 2009, Manhattan GMAT Course Prices are going to increase $50 – $100 to $1,490 in all locations (with a couple of exceptions that will be explained below). Our online course will also increase in price, to $1,090.

This is not a move we make lightly. At MGMAT, we always try to provide the best value possible to our students; this is the 1st price increase we’ve had in over two years for much the same reason.

In those same two years, we have dedicated ourselves to providing the best, most complete GMAT prep course possible. We’ve added many things to our course during this period, including:

1. Updated 3rd Edition Strategy Guides and Curriculum. We spent hundreds of hours improving and updating our curricular materials to reflect lessons from the classroom as well as recent developments with the GMAT itself.
2. Improved Post-Exam Assessment. Students now can consult with a senior Instructor after they take their GMAT to debrief and plan next steps. Hopefully, this isn’t necessary! But we know that sometimes it’s exceedingly helpful to students to have guidance for a second shot; the average increase for a 2nd-time test-taker is 31 points (from GMAC data, not just among our students) for a reason.
3. Our Test Simulation Booklet. We added this to make sure that our students could practice using the same sort of laminated booklet and marker that they’ll have to use on test day. It’s been a hit with students.
4. Manual Stopwatches. We’ve provided an online stopwatch for practice for years. However, some of our students reported that they sometimes found themselves practicing away from a computer, so we’ve now added stopwatches with lap functions to the set of materials that each student receives.
5. Essay Rating Software. We now provide our course students access to the same essay-grading software that GMAC itself uses.

We have made many other improvements large and small during this same period (e.g. we revised our online labs, etc.). We have internalized the cost of these improvements over the past 2 years, and are only now modifying our pricing to reflect some of our increased costs.

Again, this isn’t something we like to do. Still, we do take some comfort in the fact that we are yet providing what we feel is the best GMAT prep course available at a price that remains competitive with the market rate (e.g. Kaplan) while still maintaining our industry-leading Instructor compensation ($100+/hour).

If you’re reading this and were considering signing up for a course in the next few months, try to get in before March 1st. 🙂

(Our pricing is somewhat lower in Los Angeles and Austin due to pre-existing commitments we’ve made. So if you’re in one of these two areas, you not only get sunshine, you get a bargain on your GMAT course!)

Businessweek is following up on the recent enforcement action by GMAC against a website, Scoretop, that illicitly gave students access to ‘real’ GMAT questions. It’s very interesting reading.

Perhaps the most fascinating effect is that students who used the now-defunct site may be barred from applying to Business School, or even expelled if they’re already in a program! GMAC is now reportedly going through Scoretop’s hard drives to find the identities of past users of the site, with serious repercussions for confirmed users.

The lesson is that you may want to be careful what resources you use to prepare for the GMAT, as the consequences could be FAR worse than a subpar score. Certainly run the other way if anyone purports to have ‘real’ questions, as the only publicly available questions are available from GMAC itself (the Official Guides, GMAT Prep, GMAT Focus, old paper tests). Note that ManhattanGMAT recommends all of GMAC’s resources as the best and only way to get access to GMAT questions straight from the source. As we’re fond of saying around here at MGMAT, there really are no shortcuts to getting a high score!

Last month, GMAC hosted a seminar to brief us on facts, data, and trends from the test-takers out there. Here (somewhat belatedly), are some of the key points that they presented:

1.  Scores are creeping upwards – the average in 2007 was 537, 12 points higher than in 2005.

2.  The Number of Hours spent studying correlates to Higher GMAT Scores – people that achieved a score of 700 or higher reported studying an average of 114 hours for the test. In contrast, people that scored between 500 – 540 reported studying for 84 hours.

3. The Number of Weeks spent studying correlates to Higher GMAT Scores – 50+% of the people that studied for 7 weeks or more received a 600 or higher. This number dropped to 43% for those who studied between 4 and 6 weeks, and 37% for those who studied between 1 and 3 weeks.

4. Taking the Test more than once Tends to Result in a Higher Score – the mean score increase for someone who takes the test a 2nd time is 31 points. It should be noted though that this tends to be inflated by a couple of self-selection factors (i.e. the numbers tend to reflect people who underachieved on the 1st test relative to their college ranking, didn’t finish the quantitative section, etc.). 30% of re-testers saw no increase (or even a decrease). 40% of test-takers had their score increase 50 points or more, and 10% had results increase 100 points or more. I think ManhattanGMAT is responsible for some of that 10%. 🙂

From the above, it’s clear that even the administrators of the GMAT realize that this a test that you can prepare for in order to improve your performance. So your scores are certainly not fixed!

GMAC also reaffirmed once again that spending extra time on the first 10 questions does not help your score, and tends to hurt your score by ruining your time management throughout the section. There is enough variability in the algorithm such that some early mistakes are not necessarily critical to your score – you can quickly push yourself up to higher levels by getting later questions right.

These were the main points. They’re working on a new diagnostic test that can be downloaded, and the next edition of the Official Guide is targeted for late ’08. Still, this would not affect the average student substantially.

Last, they also indicated that most people rely upon word-of-mouth for choosing a test prep firm. That was possibly the best news of the event for us here at ManhattanGMAT!