The GMAT Focus Edition: What Changed and How to Prepare

The GMAT Focus Edition shortened the exam to 2 hours 15 minutes, replaced the 200–800 scale with 205–805, made Data Insights a full third of the score, and removed the essay and sentence correction. Preparation built for the legacy exam now misallocates study time.

The GMAT Focus Edition, which fully replaced the legacy GMAT in early 2024, is the most significant redesign of the exam in decades. For applicants, the practical consequences are larger than the headline changes suggest: the score scale is new, the skill weighting is different, and preparation materials and instincts built for the old exam now point in subtly wrong directions.

What exactly changed in the GMAT Focus Edition?

• Length: 2 hours 15 minutes, down from roughly 3 hours 7 minutes — three 45-minute sections instead of four.
• Sections: Quantitative Reasoning (21 questions), Verbal Reasoning (23 questions), and Data Insights (20 questions). The Analytical Writing Assessment is gone entirely.
• Scale: total scores now run 205 to 805, in 10-point increments ending in 5 — a deliberate signal that a Focus score is not comparable to a legacy score.
• Content: sentence correction has been removed from Verbal; geometry has been effectively removed from Quant. Data Sufficiency moved into Data Insights.
• Weighting: all three sections contribute equally to the total. Data Insights — integrated reasoning, data sufficiency, table and graph analysis — is now a full third of the score.
• Flexibility: test takers may answer sections in any order, bookmark and change up to three answers per section, and send scores after seeing them.

How do GMAT Focus scores compare to old GMAT scores?

The scales are intentionally offset, and percentile equivalence is the only honest comparison. A 705 on the Focus Edition sits near the 99th percentile — roughly equivalent to a legacy 760. A 655 corresponds approximately to a legacy 710–720, the historical M7 threshold zone. Admissions offices publish class averages in whichever scale applicants used, so during the transition years the safest reasoning is: convert everything to percentiles, then compare. An applicant who reports a 645 thinking it 'sounds like' the old 650 has misread the scale by roughly forty legacy points.

Why Data Insights changes preparation strategy

Under the legacy exam, Integrated Reasoning was scored separately and widely ignored; strong applicants often prepared for it in a weekend. Data Insights ends that. It is one third of the total score, it blends data sufficiency with multi-source and graphical reasoning, and it punishes exactly the candidate profile that historically did well on the GMAT: strong pure-math preparation, thin data-literacy habits. In our engagements, Data Insights is the section where diagnostic scores diverge most sharply from candidates' self-assessment — typically 15 to 25 percentile points below where they expect to be. It rewards a specific, trainable skill: extracting the one relevant number from a deliberately overloaded display, quickly, without recomputing everything.

Is the GMAT Focus easier than the old GMAT?

Shorter, yes; easier, no. The question-level difficulty is comparable, and the removal of sentence correction eliminated the most coachable question type on the exam — the place where a disciplined student could bank points on memorized rules. What remains is weighted toward reasoning under time pressure. The per-question time budget is tight (roughly two minutes in Quant, under two in Verbal and Data Insights), and the adaptive algorithm ensures a strong candidate spends the whole exam at the edge of their ability. Candidates who found the old exam grinding but manageable tend to find Focus faster and less forgiving.

How should you prepare for the GMAT Focus Edition?

Four adjustments matter most, in roughly this order.

• Start with an official Focus diagnostic, not a legacy test. The section structure and pacing are different enough that legacy scores mislead planning.
• Give Data Insights first-class treatment from week one — for most candidates it deserves 30 to 40% of study time, not the afterthought share it inherited from Integrated Reasoning.
• Train the review-and-edit feature deliberately. Bookmarking and revising up to three answers per section is a real scoring tool, but only for candidates who practice banking time for it; for everyone else it is a temptation that wrecks pacing.
• Use only Focus-specific official materials for practice tests. Third-party legacy question banks remain useful for Quant fundamentals, but pacing and section strategy must be built on the real structure.

What is a competitive GMAT Focus score for M7 schools?

For the M7 business schools, published class averages in the Focus scale are settling in the mid-600s, with admitted-student ranges commonly spanning roughly 615 to 735. A 655 keeps an applicant safely in the conversation at every program; a 705 — the 99th percentile — is a genuine asset that can offset a lower undergraduate GPA or a non-traditional background. As with the SAT at selective colleges, the score's function is asymmetric: it rarely admits anyone by itself, but it determines how generously the rest of the application is read.

How long does GMAT Focus preparation take?

For a working candidate targeting a top-percentile result, ten to fourteen weeks at roughly ten hours per week — about 120 to 140 total hours — is the standard runway. The shorter exam has not shortened preparation; it has redistributed it. Less time goes to memorizing sentence-correction rules and geometry formulas, and more goes to timed reasoning practice and Data Insights fluency, which build slowly and decay quickly. Candidates compressing below eight weeks almost always sacrifice the calibration phase, and it shows in the gap between their practice scores and their official result.

Our advice to applicants planning a 2026 or 2027 round: treat the Focus Edition as a new exam, not a shorter old one. Budget ten to fourteen weeks, anchor the plan to an official diagnostic, schedule both intended sittings at the start, and weight Data Insights as heavily as the scoring does. The candidates who struggle with Focus are almost always fighting the previous exam.