This month, the GMAT added a new section called Integrated Reasoning in place of one of the essays. Their blog discussed the relevance of this new section in B-school and beyond:
I thought I would share with you the perspectives of test takers who have participated in our research to develop the Integrated Reasoning section and who have actually experienced Integrated Reasoning. Nearly 8,000 test takers took the Integrated Reasoning section at the end of their regular GMAT exam January 3-12, 2012. More than 1,200 also responded to a short survey designed to gauge their reaction to this section and the question types.
One of the first questions that we asked these test takers was if they thought the skills measured by Integrated Reasoning were relevant to graduate management education, including the MBA, as well as the work environment they expected to find themselves in post-graduation. The range of options varied from Very Relevant to Very Irrelevant. As you can see from the chart below, nearly 70 percent felt that these skills are either relevant or very relevant to both graduate management education and the corporate environment.
Read more on the Official GMAT Blog