Is the GMAT still called the Focus Edition?

No. The exam that launched under that name is now simply the GMAT, and the suffix has been retired. If a book or a course still leads with it, that tells you when the material was written.

GMAT or GRE for business school?

Most business schools now accept both, so the question is which suits you rather than which they prefer. The GMAT's Data Insights section rewards structured reading of data; the GRE leans harder on vocabulary in context. Sit a timed section of each before committing months to one.

How long should I prepare for?

Three to five months is the usual shape for a full run alongside a job, less for a retake aimed at one section. What decides it is the gap the diagnostic shows, not a rule of thumb.

Does the section order really matter?

Enough to plan. It decides which section gets your attention while it is freshest and which gets it after ninety minutes of concentration. The practice tests show where your accuracy falls off; the order should follow that.

Yes, subject to the awarding body's limits on how soon and how often. A retake is worth it when you can name what went wrong and what will be different; it rarely is when the plan is to sit it again and hope.

Do you teach Data Insights properly, or as a footnote?

As its own block, from the start of the course. It is a third of the exam and the part where prepared candidates most often lose marks, so treating it as an appendix would be teaching the wrong test.

GMAT preparation, live online

The current exam is simply the GMAT. The “Focus Edition” name it launched under has been retired, so a course or a book still leading with it is telling you about its age rather than its content. Three sections: Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Data Insights — which folds the old Integrated Reasoning together with data sufficiency, and is where candidates who prepared on older material lose the most. You also choose your section order and may change a limited number of answers per section, a decision worth rehearsing rather than improvising.

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Exam format

What the GMAT actually looks like

The structure, the timing and the scoring, stated plainly — before anything about a course.

Length: 2 hours 15 minutes
Questions: 64 across three sections
Scored: 205–805 total, in 10-point increments
Adaptivity: Question-adaptive within each section

Quantitative Reasoning

Problem solving, without the geometry load the older exam carried. The arithmetic is not the difficulty; the phrasing is. Questions are built so that the obvious first step is often the long one, and the marks are in noticing that before committing to it.

Verbal Reasoning

Reading comprehension and critical reasoning. Sentence correction is gone, which shifts the whole section towards argument analysis: what a passage claims, what it assumes, and what would weaken it.

Data Insights

The section that did not exist before, and the one candidates who prepared on older material lose the most to. It folds the old Integrated Reasoning together with data sufficiency: multi-source reasoning, table analysis, graphics interpretation, two-part analysis, and data sufficiency proper.

You choose the order you sit the three sections in, which is a real decision rather than a formality — it determines which section gets your freshest attention.
You can bookmark questions and change a limited number of answers per section at the end. Spending that allowance well is worth rehearsing; discovering it exists on test day is not.
An on-screen calculator is available in Data Insights only, not in Quantitative Reasoning.

Before you start

Is GMAT preparation right for you?

Who it suits. Applicants whose business-school plans include the GMAT and who need to identify which tested skills require attention.

When to check another option. Undergraduate admissions preparation or a programme that requires a different test. Confirm the programme's accepted exams first.

Why it matters

What a GMAT score is for

The GMAT is the test business schools built their admissions process around, and it remains the one most of them read most closely. Its usefulness to an applicant is narrower and sharper than a general aptitude test: schools use it to compare candidates whose degrees, employers and countries are not comparable, and a strong score is one of the few parts of an application that can be improved in a defined amount of time. Data Insights in particular is there because the skill it tests — reading a table and knowing what it does not tell you — is what the degree is about.

Coverage

What the preparation covers

The ground a course goes over. How much of it you need, and in what order, is what the first session decides.

Quantitative Reasoning: problem solving, without the old geometry load
Verbal Reasoning: reading comprehension and critical reasoning
Data Insights: data sufficiency, multi-source reasoning, table and graph analysis, two-part analysis
Section order, the bookmark-and-edit tool, and how to spend the three answer changes
Full-length adaptive practice tests, reviewed question by question

Where marks go

Where candidates lose marks on the GMAT

Not a list of study tips. These are the specific ways this particular test takes marks off people who know the material.

Preparing for the retired format

Material that leads with the Focus Edition name, or that drills sentence correction and heavy geometry, is teaching a paper that no longer exists. The commonest way to lose marks on this exam is to have spent months on the wrong one.

Treating Data Insights as a bolt-on

It carries the same weight as the other two sections and is the one most candidates leave until last. It is also the section where a technique gap is most expensive, because multi-source and two-part questions punish disorganised reading far harder than a quant question punishes slow arithmetic.

Answering data sufficiency instead of assessing it

Data sufficiency asks whether a question can be answered, not what the answer is. Solving it anyway is the single most common way to run out of time in Quantitative, and it feels productive right up until the clock does not agree.

Spending the answer edits badly

You get a limited number of changes per section. Used on the questions you were never going to get, they are wasted; used on the two you flagged because you were between options, they are worth real marks. That is a plan, not a reflex.

Choosing a section order by habit

Sitting your strongest section first feels good and is often wrong: it spends your freshest attention where you needed it least. The order should come from where your accuracy falls off when you are tired, which the practice tests will tell you.

Reading critical reasoning for topic rather than structure

The passages are about business, science, policy. None of that matters. What matters is the shape of the argument, and a candidate reading for subject matter will keep picking the answer that is true rather than the one that is relevant.

Lesson format

Group course, or one-to-one

Group · 72 hours

Seventy-two hours across all three sections, in classes of six. Data Insights gets its own block rather than a footnote, and the review sessions work through the reasoning that made a wrong answer attractive in the first place.

One-to-one

One-to-one work for candidates on a deadline or a retake: a diagnostic first, then hours spent only where the score is actually leaking — most often Data Insights, or verbal timing.

How it runs

How the teaching works

A diagnostic before anything is planned

The first session is spent finding out where the marks are actually going. That is not a formality: on most of these tests the gap a student describes and the gap the diagnostic shows are different, and hours spent on the described one are hours wasted.

Teaching in the order your deadline allows

A group course works through the syllabus in a fixed order because a class of six has to. One-to-one starts with whatever is costing you most and works outwards, which is why it suits a retake or a short runway better.

Timed work from early, not saved for the end

Untimed accuracy is a poor predictor of a timed score, and finding that out three weeks before the test is too late. Timed sections start in the first fortnight, short at first.

Review and progress checks

Review looks beyond the mark: which errors recur, whether the reasoning is clearer and how accuracy holds under time pressure. Bring earlier attempts to the discussion so the next practice has a specific purpose.

All of it runs in the browser, live, with a teacher on the other end. There are no recordings sold as a course and no premises to travel to.

Timeline

How long GMAT preparation takes

A rough shape rather than a promise. People arrive at different starting points and the plan is built around yours, but this is what a full run usually looks like.

1
Twelve to twenty weeks out — diagnostic first
A full-length adaptive test before any teaching, sat in the order you think you will use. It sets the baseline and, more usefully, shows where accuracy drops as the clock runs — which is what decides your section order.
2
Weeks 2–10 — the three sections, Data Insights included from the start
Content and technique together. Data Insights is taught alongside the other two rather than after them, because leaving it late is the mistake this exam punishes most reliably.
3
Weeks 10–16 — full-length adaptive tests
A full test every week or ten days, each reviewed question by question. Reviewing the reasoning that made a wrong answer attractive matters more than the score, and it is the part most self-study skips.
4
The last fortnight — order, pacing, edits
Rehearsing the decisions rather than learning content: which order, when to bookmark, how to spend the answer changes, and what to do when a question is going badly at ninety seconds.

Practice

Practising between lessons

Lessons are where something gets explained; the marks move in the hours between them. Both of these are included with every GMAT course and package.

Full-length practice tests

The real section timing, the on-screen tools the test gives you, and the real adaptive behaviour. A score from an untimed paper printout tells you much less than it appears to.

Question bank

Filter to one section and one difficulty band and work a narrow skill until the pattern in your wrong answers is obvious. Solved questions are remembered, so a session does not hand back what you already got right.

FAQ

GMAT questions we get asked

Is the GMAT still called the Focus Edition?: No. The exam that launched under that name is now simply the GMAT, and the suffix has been retired. If a book or a course still leads with it, that tells you when the material was written.
GMAT or GRE for business school?: Most business schools now accept both, so the question is which suits you rather than which they prefer. The GMAT's Data Insights section rewards structured reading of data; the GRE leans harder on vocabulary in context. Sit a timed section of each before committing months to one.
How long should I prepare for?: Three to five months is the usual shape for a full run alongside a job, less for a retake aimed at one section. What decides it is the gap the diagnostic shows, not a rule of thumb.
Does the section order really matter?: Enough to plan. It decides which section gets your attention while it is freshest and which gets it after ninety minutes of concentration. The practice tests show where your accuracy falls off; the order should follow that.
Can I retake it?: Yes, subject to the awarding body's limits on how soon and how often. A retake is worth it when you can name what went wrong and what will be different; it rarely is when the plan is to sit it again and hope.
Do you teach Data Insights properly, or as a footnote?: As its own block, from the start of the course. It is a third of the exam and the part where prepared candidates most often lose marks, so treating it as an appendix would be teaching the wrong test.

Pricing

What GMAT preparation costs

Shown in US dollars. Charged in US dollars — there is no conversion at checkout to be surprised by.

One-to-one lessons