GMAT Awful Online Experience

Question

I just wanna explain to those who think that the online GMAT is gonna be an easier environment, you may very well be mistaken. I started the GMAT with a good sentiment, felt good, have done my practice, and consistently scored above 760+ on the OG practice. I was ready. What I was not ready for was how bad this experience was going to be. The first thing that happens is you have a video call with someone that checks off whether your setup is acceptable or not. This was simple, he was kind and all seemed good. Then I pressed the next button and low and behold you don't get to choose the order the GMAT sections come in. I was flustered but didn't think much of it. Then my moderator came on while time was ticking and told me that my room wasn't acceptable (even though the person before checked it off) they said I was allowed to have any windows, so I got up and ran to cover up the windows somehow. Now let me tell you, it's not like my house is on the first floor and my window is opposite a place anyone could signal. I was on the 8th floor of an apartment building. So after spending minutes fixing my room, now my entire exam is threatened because I am stressed from the get-go and know I can't check my work as I usually would. (Also don't cuss at your computer they will interrupt you and tell you that you cannot make noise losing even more valuable time) Not only that but the early math questions I got were much more difficult than any exam question I had gotten previously. it was a bad start and I had to make up lost time. I do not know how I did but I do not think I got a 51, probably closer to a 48 or even a 49. (scores I have rarely gotten on the practice exams under controlled environments.) Then there was no break between the math and verbal and by the time you reach that, your brain is mush. Questions I would usually take 1-minute answering took a lot longer to understand. (Although I found the verbal was much more consistent than the math). The moderator interrupted me many times telling me to take my finger off my lip and other issues. These interruptions ruin your train of thought and can backtrack you minutes if done at the wrong time. The lack of clarity with GMAT and them not giving a standardized list of what's acceptable as a test setup and whats not is unacceptable for an exam that costs so much to retake IMO. I wish everyone the best of luck on their online exam but I will be taking mine in person next time.

aviddd · Answer

Sorry to hear about your experience. After the exam was completed, don't you come to know your score, like we do normally? What score are you expecting?

oscarcasas21 · Answer

I was aiming for a 770 or higher (consistent with my practice OG) and probably got around a 740. Now to put that into perspective that means I probably got 2.5x as many questions wrong. If I had to take a guess I would say 49Q 42V. I guess we will see.

tuan1995 · Answer

Thanks for sharing. I can see that you used OG practice as an indicator for your level, but IMO the OG questions are generally far more easier than the exam questions. Actually, I was shocked by the difficulty level of the real exams.

Hovkial · Answer

Thanks for the debrief. The official site does mention that (a) there is no choice of section orders, and (b) there is no break between Q and V sections.

Your other observations about the lack of standardized requirements with the proctor and the environment are indeed apt. The official site does not list the things that you experienced as unacceptable and proctors seem to be imposing their own views. Proctors may be doing their job, but the lack of uniformity and apparent lack of concern for the testtaker are concerning.

Have you thought of informing GMAC of your poor experience? Adding one more voice may help to make positive changes.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Sorry to hear about all that. Who knows, maybe you did better than you think you did. Let us know when you receive your score.

oscarcasas21 · Answer

Ended up getting a 740 Q50 V40, I think the lack of break really killed me in the verbal at the30 minute mark you can feel your brain atrophy lol. Either way, I'm going to retake it since I know I can get Q44-Q47 for verbal and maybe Q51 for math. Does anybody have any advice on moving from Q50 to Q51 consistently?

GMATaxe001 · Answer

Hi oscarcasas21 . As someone already mentioned, it is known that the section sequence would be math followed by Verbal and then IR. Many people have also mentioned a fair caveat about not touching or covering face. The score you have is enough for you to get into most of the top b schools so imo its time for you to work on your applications and not worry about the score as its well above averages of most schools.

bb do you agree?

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bb  do you agree?

Posted from my mobile device

oscarcasas21 · Answer

I would agree with that if it wasnt the fact that I have consistenly scored 760-780 on Practice Exams and felt like I underperformed during the test. So I might as well just take it in person again and strengthen my score, worst case scenario ill just cancel my score. I do not plan on wasting much more time studying since I'm already prepped maybe 20 hours at the most. I plan to take the exam in 10 days in person I like that method better.

GMATaxe001 · Answer

Okay. If that works for you. Do you mind sharing your prep strategy so far?

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

740 is a great score. Congrats!!! There’s always a variance in scores depending on the questions you get and how you feel. People also tend to over emphasize and I’ve appreciate the brakes. We also are poor judges of our performance during the test. There was a good post that surface just a few days ago about a person taking GMAT online on one day I’m taking GMAT in person the following day. They got 760 on the online test (it took 3 days for the scores to be released) and they got 730 on the test center test. In their case they got a higher score Online. However, there is a known error/fluctuation of about 40 points between attempts. As to retaking them GMAT, it all comes down to the best use of time. It’s definitely possible to invest a little bit of time and get the 99th percentile. I feel that’s worth it just to be able to brag that you have a 99th percentile

on the other hand, if you’re going to sync a bunch of time and sacrifice the quality of your applications as the result, I would probably suggest sticking with 740. That’s score is often even good enough for the dreaded engineering guys from Southeast Asia and is a competitive score to any business school for a regular European or US applicant and very competitive score for South America or Africa applicants. Not knowing your timelines and limitations, it’s hard to advise one way or another but you should be able to make the right decision with this information. Posted from my mobile device

oscarcasas21 · Answer

Yeah I'm not planning to apply for 2 more years (I actually am just using the time the pandemic has given me to study since it will be harder when i'm working full time) As to my preparation, I studied hard for 6 weeks. The first thing I did was just test my math on magoosh. I did well answering almost 85% of questions right (most being hard). I didn't even touch a verbal question at the start as I knew that it would be my weak point. I decided I would watch all the magoosh videos for verbal and once I completed that I just started doing magoosh questions. Every question I got wrong I would review why I got it wrong and learn from it. Ultimately I finished the 1500 questions and I was able to determine my weakpoints. For math it was Counting and Integer Problems so I watched those videos. Then I looked at verbal and looked at my consistent errors (than, idioms, parralelism) I then did my best at really understanding why and when these questions were wrong. I have recently been getting to the point that SC makes sense and I'm not just doing what sounds best, but what works and I can identify why all other choices are wrong. For RC and CR I honestly believe just continuosly practicing questions helps as you learn to identify the patterns that are common and don't get led astray by misleading answer choices. While doing all my studying I would take 1 OG practice test every week and mark the areas to improve. By the end on the OG Practice 5 and 6 exam I got a 770 and a 780 (V44, V47) and (Q51, Q50). I recommend really trying to understand why you missed a question in SC, and everytime you miss one, understand why you choose the wrong answer choice and why you didnt choose the right one.

bb · Answer

In that case you definitely have time so may as well nail that 760 😎

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