New GMAT Structure

From April 16th, 2018, the GMAT will be 23 minutes shorter. The changes affect only the quant and verbal sections. The new structure is:

Quant       31 questions          62 minutes
Verbal       36 questions          65 minutes

The content of the questions and the scoring system for the entire test remain the same. The new structure can only be seen as an advantage for you. The time per question is almost identical. The only change is that there are fewer questions, meaning that the time you need to concentrate for has been reduced.

The test makers say that one of the reasons they have done this is that the number of unscored “research” questions has been reduced. This is not particularly useful information for you as a test taker, because you must treat every question as contributing towards your score, just as test takers have had to do in the past.

However, it’s always good to be told that you have to do less to achieve the same result. The new changes won’t affect your preparation either. The syllabus remains the same, and your preparation time will be unaffected. 

It could be argued that the value of each question is now slightly higher, given that there are fewer questions. This means that wrong answers will have a slightly greater impact on your score. It may make you more reluctant to guess and move on quickly to the next question. However, all the strategies that helped test takers with the old format will still help you with the new format. It will still be to your advantage not to lose too much time on the hardest of questions. Very few test takers are after a perfect score. Many are after a high score. High scores can be achieved by making some mistakes, so careful selection of the questions that you will spend less time on will still be an important part of your test day strategy.