Best Section Order for the GMAT Focus Edition

One of the most common questions that I get from folks beginning their GMAT prep as we head to the end of 2024, is which section order is the best? Before the GMAT released the new version of the test at the end of 2023, I would always say "whatever you prefer, just make sure you stick to your order after your third practice exam". Now, with every section possessing a uniform length and scoring impact, as well as a rumored (and likely) section adaptivity impacting your overall score, there is a more specific approach to ordering the sections. However, it does still rely to a degree on your personal proficiency, and you should definitely still finalize your order by the time you finish your third practice exam at mba.com.

Start with Your Strongest Section

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has been incredibly cagey regarding the possibility of section adaptivity from one section to another in the GMAT Focus Edition, but since they haven't outright denied its existence, just about all of us GMAT experts believe that section adaptivity must exist to some degree. Most likely, it functions similarly to how it does on the Executive Assessment for executive and part-time MBA admissions, wherein performance on your first section can broadly affect the starting difficulty of your subsequent section and by extension your overall score.

For this reason, we recommend starting with your personally strongest section, which is most likely either the Quantitative or Verbal section. If you are strongest on the new Data Insights section, you can certainly begin there as well, but if the recently updated official GMAT percentiles are any indication, most test takers are doing most poorly on that section by a decent margin. 

What you do not want to do is try to "game" the test by starting with your weakest section in order to see easier questions in the sections you generally have a harder time with. This approach would actually shrink your margin for error on the exam, since as soon as you missed one of those "easier" questions you could find yourself beginning to be rather heavily punished by what in some cases can be a pretty punitive scoring algorithm.

Put the Data Insights Section in the Middle

Understanding that the Data Insights section seems to rarely be the best section for most current GMAT test takers, we recommend taking it second and most likely without a break. Because this section includes both Quantitative and Verbal features, along with an interface calculator, it can be a nice bridge between the Quantitative and Verbal sections. Furthermore, the Data Insights section requires the most attention to detail of any section in the exam. There is more information per question in this section and it notoriously exploits cheap tricks such as conflating percentages vs totals or not noticing some accompanying text buried on a Multi-Source Reasoning tab.

That said, if the Data Insights section is your best section and you feel strongly that it should be first in your section ordering for that reason, you should most likely choose to take the Verbal section second because it will require more attention to detail than the Quantitative section will.

Battling Final Section Fatigue

Remember that the GMAT does allow for one break after either the first or second section. To combat mental exhaustion, we recommend taking the break after the second section rather than after the first. This should allow you a few minutes to recharge before going into whichever section is last, which is likely not your strength. 

Obviously, your choices in the first two sections will dictate which section goes last, but it really shouldn't be Data Insights for the reasons we outlined. If the Quantitative is left, you need to force flexibility in your approach to allow creative problem solving throughout that section. If the Verbal section remains, you'll need to force good note taking for every question to encourage proactive prediction and an effective process of elimination.

Ultimately, the section order is still not terribly important for the GMAT Focus, and if you just have an order that you like best, just pick it. That said, this approach should work as a reasonable structure for most test takers and remember that no matter what order you settle on - Don't change your approach on test day!