GMAT Integrated Reasoning & Essay

Strategy Guide + Online Resources

• Publisher: Manhattan Prep
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781506249209
• Topic: Studienhilfen
• Subtopic: GMAT-Studienführer

Manhattan Prep's GMAT Integrated Reasoning & Essay helps prepare students for the essay section of the GMAT as well as the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section of both the GMAT and the Executive Assessment. The guide contains exclusive time management and problem-solving strategies for both exams. GMAT Integrated Reasoning & Essay comes with access to Atlas, your online learning platform. Atlas includes practice problems for all four Integrated Reasoning problem types, a full-length adaptive practice GMAT exam, interactive video lessons, strategies for time management, and many other study resources.All of the lessons and practice problems in the guide and in Atlas were created by expert instructors with 99th-percentile scores on the GMAT.Acing the GMAT or the EA requires more than tricks and tips—you've got to master the material and learn how to think your way through complex problems. Manhattan Prep guides contain the most in-depth, comprehensive materials available for GMAT and EA studies and are the top-selling GMAT prep guides worldwide.

Chapter 1

How to Use This Guide

In This Chapter

• The Essay
• Integrated Reasoning

In this chapter, you will learn how to get the most out of this guide and other resources you may use as you prepare for these two sections.

CHAPTER 1 How to Use This Guide

The GMAT Integrated Reasoning & Essay Strategy Guide will help you prepare for the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section of the GMAT and Executive Assessment (EA), as well as the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA, or Essay) section of the GMAT.

The Essay

The Essay is the least important section of the GMAT (and it doesn’t appear on the Executive Assessment at all). You will just need to get a “good enough” score, and approximately 80% of test-takers cross that threshold. You probably won’t need to spend very much time to get yourself ready for this section.

Still, you’ll want to have a mental template in place to make it as easy as possible to write the essay; this guide will show you how.

For many students, working through the essay material in this guide will be enough to get ready for the Essay section. If you have access to our GMAT Interact™ essay lesson, you can use this resource in addition to or instead of the essay chapter in this guide.

If you are struggling to compose complex sentences, Appendix A of this guide will teach you how to write more advanced sentences. You may also find it useful to study the Sentence Correction unit of Manhattan Prep’s GMAT All the Verbal or GMAT Foundations of Verbal guides.

You can test your skills using GMAC’s GMAT Write™ program, the same software scoring system used on the real exam. For a small fee, you’ll get a score and feedback on two essays. You’ll be able to revise the essays and submit them again to see whether your score improves. If you’re in one of our study programs, check your program details; you might already have access to GMAT Write™ for free.

Integrated Reasoning

On the GMAT, the Integrated Reasoning (IR) score is more important than the Essay score but usually less important than the Quant or Verbal score. As a result, you will likely spend more time studying Quant and Verbal than IR.

On the Executive Assessment, though, the IR score is about as important as the Quant and Verbal scores, so you will likely spend a similar amount of time getting ready for all three sections.

On both exams, the IR section tests you on a mix of quantitative and verbal skills. The problems don’t resemble the kinds of problems you’re used to seeing on standardized tests—and this unnerves some people at first. But IR more closely resembles the kind of real-world analysis that you already do every day at work, so as you learn how to handle each problem type, you may find that you end up preferring the IR section to the others.

IR tosses a whole bunch of data at you and expects you to figure out what information you do or don’t need in order to solve the problem—just as you have to do every day in real life. IR also requires integration of quant, logic, and comprehension all in one problem—again, just like real life.

In short, IR is going to feel messy, chaotic, imprecise—in that sense, it won’t feel like a typical standardized test. But if you orient yourself toward the idea that this is a real-life type of problem, you’ll be expecting that information overload and so you’ll be in a better position to handle this section.

Chapter 3, “Introduction to Integrated Reasoning,” will give you an overview of the timing, scoring, and structure of this section, including the four types of IR problems. This chapter also introduces the UPS process: Understand, Plan, Solve. You’ll use this process to answer every IR problem on the test.

Chapters 4–7 cover the four problem types, one per chapter. We think it is best to study the four types in the order they appear in this book.

Chapter 8 summarizes the strategies for each problem type and for the overall IR section. It also addresses decision-making strategies for both the GMAT and the EA.

Appendix A discusses how to write more complex sentences for the Essay section on the GMAT. Finally, Appendix B summarizes some of the common math topics that are tested on the IR section. For full treatment of these and other quant topics, as well as strategies that will help you solve more efficiently, see Manhattan Prep’s GMAT All the Quant guide.

If you are studying for the EA, incorporate IR equally with your Quant and Verbal studies. Study all three types every week.

If you are studying for the GMAT, you will likely concentrate on Quant and Verbal for the first few weeks. That’s fine, but don’t wait until the end of your studies to look at the IR section; spread out the work relatively evenly over time. Plan to study one IR question type every few weeks, depending on the total length of your studies.

As you finish each chapter in this guide, practice your skills using the practice problems found in Atlas, Manhattan Prep’s online study center. If you purchase any official materials, such as the GMAT Official Guide or the EA Official Practice Questions from GMAC^® (the makers of both exams), you’ll have access to additional online Question Banks of real IR problems from past administrations of the official test.

Finally, make sure to include the IR section when taking practice computer-adaptive tests (CATs). A lot of people studying for the GMAT skip the IR and Essay sections because they know that these sections are less important overall on that exam, but it’s critical to practice under official test conditions.

You’re ready to dive into the book. Good luck and happy studying!