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!

In the first part of this article, we took a look at how to read MSR passages and take some light notes. We finished off with a problem—now let’s talk about the solution! (Note: click on the link earlier in this paragraph; you’re going to want the tab text when reading through the solution.)

Here’s the problem again:

 “Based on the information in the passage and tables, it can be determined that the average monthly meat consumption, in pounds, by the residents of Barras in the AD 1000s was which of the following?

“(A) 9,600

“(B) 10,000

“(C) 16,000

“(D) 17,400

“(E) 18,000”

How did it go? Our first task is to figure out where to go. Which tab is likely to be most useful in answering this question? They ask about meat consumption and also specify Barras in the AD 1000s.

Both tables (in tabs 2 and 3) talk about Barras and meat consumption, but this question asks about pounds—that sends us to tab 3.

Read the key up at top. The table shows average monthly meat consumption (good, that’s what we want!) in pounds for a 4-person family. We want pounds. Do we want a 4-person family?

Nope. The question asks about the total consumption in pounds for the residents of Barras. We’re going to need to do a little calculating here.

In the 1000s, Barras’s average monthly consumption per 4-person family was 160 pounds. Per person, then, consumption was 160 /4 = 40 pounds. Hmm, now what?

We need to know the total number of residents in Barras in the 1000s. Where did they tell us that?

Right! Tab 1 gave some information about population at the end of the paragraph about Barras. The passage says that there were 400 residents, on average, in the AD 1000s.

400 residents multiplied by 40 pounds per resident is a total of 16,000 pounds.

The correct answer is (C).

What did you learn about MSRs from this problem? I think there are 3 key takeaways, which I list at the end of this article; try to come up with your own before you read them.

Let’s try another problem from this MSR; give yourself about 1.5 to 2 minutes total to answer all three parts of this problem.

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Given that Integrated Reasoning may become more important for those who want to go into consulting or banking, let’s take a look at a Multi-Source Reasoning (MSR) problem!

In this first part, we’re going to take a look at how to read and take notes on the MSR text. In the next article, we’ll do a problem that goes with the text. This MSR is from the free GMATPrep test, so if you have not yet taken GMATPrep, don’t read this article yet! Put it away and come back to it after you’ve seen the problem yourself.

MSRs appear as three tabs of information. I can’t format things into tabs here, so I’ll just show it all to you one after the other. You have about 2.5 minutes per question on IR. This MSR has a total of 3 associated questions, but I’m only giving you one in this article. Spend about 2 to 2.5 minutes on the read-through, leaving yourself about 1.5 to 2 minutes to spend on each question.

Tab 1

“An archaeological team has been excavating three ancient village sites—Barras, Agna, and Cussaia—looking in particular at kitchen waste dumps as a way to understand the villages’ dietary patterns and trading relationships. What follows are brief summaries of their findings.

“Barras: The best data come from stratified finds in this oceanside village, which was inhabited from AD 600 to 1300 and was the only one of the three villages to produce seafood, its main dietary item. Though Barras residents hunted on land and raised crops, this provided relatively small amounts of food. As Barras’s overall prosperity rose, there was more food available per person, and its population increased from an average of 100 residents in the AD 600s to 400 residents in the AD 1000s to 600 residents in the AD 1200s.

“Agna: Agna was established in an inland forest around AD 800 and its residents mainly hunted but also ate considerable amounts of fruit, nuts, and other forest-vegetable products. They also traded meat to Barras for other goods. With no open fields, Agna grew no grain.

“Cussaia: Predating Barras, Cussaia depended heavily on raising grain crops and eventually obtained seafood and meat via trade. It traded directly only with Barras, because a mountain range separated it from Agna, though some products may have been traded between Agna and Cussaia via Barras.

“Additionally, there is no evidence that any other village traded with Barras, Agna, or Cussaia prior to AD 1300.”

—

Tab 2

“Barras: Percentages, by Estimated Weight, of Dietary Items Consumed per Person per Month”

Century	Seafood	Meat	Grains	Other
600s	65%	10%	10%	15%
700s	65%	10%	15%	10%
800s	60%	15%	15%	10%
900s	45%	30%	12%	13%
1000s	45%	30%	12%	13%
1100s	60%	10%	20%	10%
1200s	55%	25%	10%	10%

—

Tab 3

“Barras, Agna: Estimated Average Monthly Meat and Seafood Consumption (lb per 4-Person Family)”

Century	Barras		Agna
	Seafood	Meat	Seafood	Meat
600s	240	37	not applicable	not applicable
700s	250	38	not applicable	not applicable
800s	275	70	60	240
900s	258	172	66	180
1000s	240	160	66	186
1100s	275	45	8	240
1200s	265	120	45	240

—

That’s a lot to read through in only 2 minutes or so. The key is to be able to divide the info into three categories:

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Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported that Bain & Co, a well-respected management consulting firm, is considering using Integrated Reasoning scores in its hiring process. What does this mean for you?

Bain represents one of two major post-MBA career paths: management consulting and banking. Harvard Business School, for example, reported that approximately 35% of graduates enter the financial services industry and 25% accept a consulting job (these stats represent the first job after obtaining the degree).

Because so many students want these jobs, the consulting firms and banks can afford to be choosy. At the same time, they have to wade through a large number of resumes—what to do?

One possibility, evidently, is to let the GMAT do some of the sorting for them. Keith Bevans, global head of recruiting at Bain, told Bloomberg Businessweek, “The IR scores are trying to test analytical abilities, which is important to us. We hope it’s a good match for determining if you’ll be successful at Bain.”

Quick GMAT aside: did you spot the errors in that quote? The which modifier improperly refers to a verb, not a noun. Also, it’s whether you’ll be successful, not if. We’ll give Mr. Bevans a pass, though; nobody actually speaks in fully grammatical sentences. (…with the possible exception of Oprah Winfrey—have you ever really listened to how well she constructs her sentences, even in speech? It’s impressive.)

[Edited to add: One of my fellow teachers, Pedro Ledesma, pointed out to me that the sentence could be corrected in a different way. The IR scores are trying to test analytical abilities, which ARE important to us. In this case, the which modifier would refer to abilities. Alternatively, if Mr. Bevans had wanted to refer to the whole clause, he might have said: The IR scores are trying to test analytical abilities and this  (the fact that they are doing so) is important to us.]

Bain hasn’t actually decided yet whether to use IR scores (or, if so, how). Mr. Bevans did make a point of saying that other important factors—such as “work experience, education, leadership experience, and one-on-one interactions with staff”—will still be just as important as ever.

So what should I do?

If you don’t want to go into banking or consulting, then your only IR concern is what the business schools think. Last year, the schools didn’t use IR, so most test prep companies and admissions consultants were counseling students to aim for 4 or higher (the high score on IR is 8).

Some schools may begin to use IR this year, so we’ve been counseling people to go for a 5 or higher—possibly a 6, if you’re applying to a top 5 school. Several schools, though, have said that they want to see how well IR scores predict success in business school, so it will be a couple of years at least before they begin to place any serious emphasis on this section.

I do want to go into consulting / banking…

You have a choice to make. You can take more time to study now and focus on maximizing your IR score as well. To be competitive at the very best companies, you’ll need a 7 or 8.

Let’s say, though, that you have very limited time now, or that you’re not sure yet whether you’ll want to go into banking or consulting. In that case, you might decide to take the test again after starting business school, either before your first summer break (if you need the score to help secure an internship) or before the recruiting season begins in earnest in the winter or spring of your second year in school.

Realistically speaking, a lot of people will want to follow that second path. I just want to warn you: the last thing you’re going to want to do in a year or two is to re-take the GMAT just for the IR score. You’ll also have to study again for quant and verbal because you won’t want to risk a big score drop in those areas; the firms will see those scores as well.

If you are applying in 2 months and you just don’t have time to add thorough IR prep into the mix, then the decision is made for you. Quant and Verbal are more important now, so you might have to re-take the GMAT in the future to get that IR score.

If you have the luxury of time, though, then use it. Plan to add about 4 weeks to your overall study timeframe. Then start incorporating IR throughout your study (there are actually a lot of overlaps between IR, quant, and verbal). Some starting points are below.

If you’re one of our students, watch the two-hour IR workshop tape in your student center. Use that in conjunction with our IR Strategy Guide to learn all of the strategies for IR questions.

Here are four free How To Analyze articles, one for each of the four IR question types:

Table

Two-Part

Multi-Source Reasoning

Graph

Questions? Concerns? Let us know here or contact our office to discuss (800.576.GMAT).

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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Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

I’ve been wanting to do this problem with you for a while, but I’ve been delaying because well, you’ll see when you get to the table. It takes a lot of work to recreate that in a blog post. ? But that ridiculously large table is also the reason why I want to talk about this one—so let’s test it out! Read more

As we discussed a few months ago, most schools are still determining how to use IR during the admissions process. A recent US News article reports on a new survey just released by Kaplan; the survey lends broader support to the anecdotal reports that we’ve been hearing from individual schools.

Kaplan surveyed 265 business schools, including 17 of the top 25, to find out how they’ve been using IR so far. A little over half are still figuring out what to do with the score, while roughly ¼ of the respondents indicated that they already consider IR important. Even in that last category, though, the schools are still determining how much emphasis to place on IR. US News spoke with Dawna Clarke, Director of Admissions at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and while she does consider IR important, she also indicated that they’re still figuring out exactly how to use the scores in the absence of well-established historical data. In a nutshell: people aren’t quite sure yet what the data means or how much of an impact it should have on admissions.

Expect all of this to begin changing next year. Assuming that the data eventually establishes that the IR section does actually identify strong business school candidates, the schools will likely begin using IR more seriously during the 2013 admissions season (for those who are hoping to enter a program beginning in 2014). How heavily will IR weigh in the admissions decision? We won’t know that until we start to have better analyses of how useful the score is; if it turns out to be a strong predictor of b-school success, then IR is rapidly going to become a very important part of the GMAT.

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:

—

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.

—

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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