Beijing - Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the owner and administrator of the GMAT exam, announced Tuesday that it will make major revisions in the GMAT test beginning June next year.

The biggest revision will appear in the writing section, where one of the two essays will be cut and replaced by the “integrated reasoning” section.

The new section will be comprised of a series of questions designed to test the comprehensive capability of test-takers.

“We made this revision to better evaluate students’ reasoning capabilities,” said Guo Fanmin, vice-president of psychometric research, GMAC. “For example, we present graphics as well as texts in a single question to see if the test-taker can quickly process information presented in different forms.”

“We call it ‘high-order thinking skills’, which is critical for an MBA candidate in future study,” Guo added.

In the past five years, the number of Chinese people taking GMAT has been escalating by an average 40 percent every year. In 2010, 30,213 people took the test, exceeding India to be the second-largest follower of this test, only behind the United States.

China has become one of the most important markets for GMAT, said Julia Herries, regional director of Asia-Pacific region, GMAC. “We will keep looking for quality partners in China to promote the test.”

Currently GMAC is cooperating with five business schools in China with Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and CEIBS.

“I hope our Chinese partners can showcase this test to more applicants and at the same time, we are also helping to publicize these schools overseas to attract more international students,” Herries said.