GMAT course upgrade: A brand new CAT, improved content, and smarter progress reporting

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Knewton

It’s been a busy few months here at Knewton! This week, we released several major upgrades to our GMAT course. If you’re a student, the changes are already integrated into your site experience. Here’s what we’ve added:

A brand new practice GMAT
Totally upgraded course content
Better tracking on all your GMAT concepts

New practice CAT

One of the most important parts of preparing for the GMAT is taking a series of full-length computer-adaptive tests (CATs), and we just added number 6 to the roster.

Creating a new CAT requires a pool of literally hundreds of questions so that the test can select appropriate items for each test-taker. After a lot of careful calibration, we’re excited for students to experience the ways this latest exam gets them in shape for test day.

With 6 practice GMATs now in the course, we recommend that students take one as a diagnostic before the course, three during the live class schedule at specific times, and then two after session 12. Those two should be followed by the GMAT Prep exams from MBA.com for a total of 8 practice exams before the real deal.

Completely updated course content

Click into the concept pages from your homework and test items and you’ll notice a few changes. We added entries for 100+ topics (more on that below), and re-worked each page of reference content to give you more tools to improve.

Now, each piece of content connects the concept you’re viewing to how you’ll see it on exam day. An “On the GMAT” section provides test-like examples for each concept, and the new content features more strategy tips to help you implement what you learn.

More detailed concept reporting

Brad wrote about this last week, but we’re still pretty excited. Our Content team has been hard at work isolating the GMAT concepts you need to know in even more detail.

Instead of being defined by one main concept, questions are now marked with all the concepts that they test. More concept data gives you better progress reports — and an even more complete picture of what you need to work on.

Enjoy! If you have any questions or feedback, let us know over on the Knewton Community Page.

And if you’re not a student, now’s a great time to join