Many schools care the most about the Quant section of the GMAT, but Integrated Reasoning has become more important since it was introduced in 2012. And employers who care about test scores are often very interested in your Integrated Reasoning (IR) scores. Follow the below 3 Keys to Success and you’ll be sitting pretty on test day. Read more

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A student in one of my classes recently asked me how best to set up his GMAT scratch paper while taking the exam, so my first task is to give a shout-out to Robert and thank him for giving me the topic for this article!

I shared a few things with him during class and I’ll share these things with you below. Plus, now that I’ve had a chance to reflect, I have some other ideas for you. Read more

Exciting news! GMAC (the owners of the GMAT) announced on Friday that, starting immediately, we’ll get our unofficial IR scores as soon as the test is over. They already do this for our Quant, Verbal, and Total scores, so IR will be added to the mix.

As with the other scores, the IR score will be considered an “unofficial” score until you receive your official score report. You can consider these test-day scores essentially official, though, as it’s incredibly rare for something to change after that day. The folks over at GMAC are professionals; they’re not going to release scores if there’s even a small chance that something could change, upsetting students who thought they had earned a different score.

So now you won’t have to wait to find out how you did on IR. (You’ll still wait for the essay score, of course, but that’s not quite so nerve-wracking, is it?)

Need to practice IR? Try our new free GMAT Interact lessons for Integrated Reasoning.

Happy studying and good luck on test day!

Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

Best GMAT Books (Test Study Guides)

Test Study Guides shares their hand-picked list of the best GMAT prep books and explains why these are the most effective study guides for the test.

Maximizing the Minimalist MBA App (Poets & Quants)

You should view your MBA application as the admissions committees do: as a holistic package of documents that work together to provide a comprehensive and cohesive introduction to you.

Students Offer Inside Look at Harvard Business School Admissions Process (Business Administration Information)

The student news organization at HBS has produced an unofficial admissions and interview guide, offering potential b-school candidates an advanced look at what types of questions they will get in their admissions interview.

Target MBA Jobs That Pay Well, Require Fewer Hours (U.S. News Education)

Find out which jobs offer a competitive salary and also have more flexibility in their work hours.

Do You Need a Résumé in the LinkedIn Era? (Harvard Business Review)

Your LinkedIn profile should be the most-viewed and most current version of your professional life. That has many people asking: Do I even need an old-fashioned résumé anymore?

Bain May Use GMAT Integrated Reasoning Test to Help Screen MBA Hires (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Bain & Co., one of the most coveted MBA employers, may soon use scores on GMAT’s new Integrated Reasoning section to screen applicants for consulting jobs.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you have been reading in the comments below or tweet @ManhattanGMAT

My title is a little odd there “ why the very specific timeframe? Well, we know that business schools aren’t using the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section much (if at all) this first year, for admission in the fall of 2013, but we also know that IR will probably become more important over time.

How much more important? Nobody knows, but it’s a good guess that the process will be fairly gradual. We have decades of data for the quant and verbal sections, so the schools can feel confident in interpreting that data to help make admissions decisions. After the first year of IR, we’ll still have only one year of data; as a result, it’s highly unlikely that IR will suddenly rise to the same level of importance as quant and verbal.

So what should you do if you’re taking the GMAT sometime this year in preparation for a fall 2014 start? How much attention do you really need to pay to IR and what kind of score will be good enough?

Here are the current percentile rankings for the 1 to 8 IR scoring scale:

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After seeing quite a few Integrated Reasoning problems floating around out there, I’ve found that one of the toughest situations to deal with is when instead of providing a single solution, the GMAT constructs a world with multiple possible solutions and then asks you to pick something that works within those parameters. Let me show you an example:

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x, y and z are positive integers. The sum of x and y is 40. The positive difference between y and z is 20.

In the table below, identify values for x and z that are together consistent with the information. Make only one selection in each column.

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Found the answer yet? If not, I think I might know why: You’re trying to solve for y. The problem is, y could be almost any integer from 1 to 39, as long as you pick values for x and z that work. You could figure out x and z for every single value of y, but that’s a very time-consuming strategy! Without the answer choices, there are more than 50 different solutions to this problem. So what is a better strategy than trying to solve for y?

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This is the latest in a series of How To Analyze articles that began with the general How To Analyze A Practice Problem article (click on the link to read the original article). This week, we’re going to analyze a specific IR question from the Graph prompt category.

Let’s try out the question: here it is. Just in case that link changes, you can also click on this link to go to the mba.com website, and then, about halfway down the page, click on the Graphics Interpretation link. We’re going to try the 2nd of the 4 questions. If you’re going for an average IR score, give yourself 2.5 minutes; if you’re going for a really good score, give yourself between 1.5 and 2 minutes.

Note: when you are done, do NOT click the next button. Just leave it up on the screen and come back here.

First, read the complete solution to the problem. In that article, I discussed how I was able to answer one of the questions correctly even though I wasn’t 100% confident that I understood part of the description of the graph. I also talked about an important lesson I learned regarding how to read the questions.

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This is the latest in a series of How To Analyze articles that began with the general How To Analyze A Practice Problem article (click on the link to read the original article). This week, we’re going to analyze a specific IR question from the Multi-Source Reasoning prompt category.

These prompts typically come with multiple questions (similar to a Reading Comp passage). First, give yourself about 2 to 2.5 minutes to read the prompt and take short notes. Then take up to about 2 minutes to answer the question.

Click on this link for the prompt and question. In case that link changes or gets broken, I’ve also included the text below “ but it’s best to use the link if it works because then you’ll be doing the problem in its official format. When you’re done, leave that page open (don’t click next) and come back here to discuss the solution.

Multi-Source Reasoning prompts consist of 2 or 3 tabs of information. Here is the prompt:

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We’ve been telling you for some time now that admissions officers have been indicating that Integrated Reasoning (IR) scores won’t factor much into admissions decisions this year. Now, Stanford has gone on the record on its own blog.

Stanford GSB Associate Director of MBA Admission Allison Davis confirms that the school will focus on the verbal, quantitative, AWA, and total scores this year and that they will use this year to determine how to evaluate them in our process for next year.

Note, though, that Stanford is figuring out how to bring IR into the admissions process starting next year “ so if you are taking the GMAT now but might want to use the score next year (or later), then you will likely need to prep more for the IR section than will this year’s candidates. While there may be a bit of leeway next year as well, it sounds like the IR score will be a factor “ assuming, of course, that GMAC has done its job and the IR section is a valid indicator of b-school success.

I see no reason to think that the IR section will turn out not to be valid, so I do expect this score to become an important part of the admission process longer term “ but if you’re applying this year, take Stanford’s announcement as one more strong piece of evidence that you don’t need to worry about IR for now!

This is the latest in a series of How To Analyze articles that began with the general How To Analyze A Practice Problem article (click on the link to read the original article). This week, we’re going to analyze a specific IR question from the Two-Part prompt category. First, give yourself up to 2.5 minutes to try the below GMATPrep problem.

An architect is planning to incorporate several stone spheres of different sizes into the landscaping of a public park, and workers who will be applying a finish to the exterior of the spheres need to know the surface area of each sphere. The finishing process costs $92 per square meter. The surface area of a sphere is equal to 4Ï€r², where r is the radius of the sphere.

In the table, select the value that is closest to the cost of finishing a sphere with a 5.50-meter circumference as well as the cost of finishing a sphere with a 7.85-meter circumference. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Circumference 5.50 m	Circumference 7.85 m	Finishing cost
		$900
		$1,200
		$1,800
		$2,800
		$3,200
		$4,500

After trying the problem, checking the answer, and reading the given solution (if any), I then try to answer the questions listed below. First, I’ll give you what I’ll call the standard solution (that is, one we might see in an Official Guide book if this were an official guide problem “ a correct solution but not necessarily one that shows us the easiest way to do the problem). Then we’ll get into the analysis.

Standard solution: The formula for circumference is C = 2Ï€r. We can use this to calculate the radii of the two spheres (note that the problem asks us to find the closest values, so we can estimate):

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