GMAT Debrief turned Tragi-Comedy. Good Bye Fall '22

Hi All,

This was supposed to be a lengthy, melodramatic and almost heroic debrief about my freakin' "GMAT journey". The story of a 39 year lawyer shaking off the rust, taking a US style standardised test and then thanking this community, test prep companies, god etc etc. Sadly this is mutating into a frustrating horror story.

Exam 1 - 29 Nov 2021 - V30 Q44 (600) - Verbal started off quite well. I was deploying the PoE, identifying 4 clearly incorrect choices and spotting the one choice that was logical. Then came a tiny two para RC passage and I got hit by some debilitating perfectionism as I was used to 100% accuracy on RC. I read the passage twice or may be 4 times and finally guesstimated the 4 or 5 questions on that passage. To my horror the next set of questions were suspiciously "easy" and I breezed through them. Not feeling too great about verbal, I collected my wits and finished the Quant section which "seemed" average. I didn't expect a great score but 100 points below my scores on Official Practice Exams 1 & 2 seemed a like world record in under performance !!!
The ESR was even more astounding. My accuracy in the first quarter on both Q & V was 100%. The 2nd quarter was a respectable 80% on both. I had probably guessed pretty well that dastardly RC passage. Well.... I thought to myself.... I had decent skills but my experience of how I was doing was totally disconnected from (and of no relevance to) how I was actually performing.


Exam 2 (Online) - 19 Dec 2021 - V28 Q48 (630) - I decided to take the online GMAT and the experience was pretty good. The proctor was really alert. The verbal "seemed adaptive". The questions were getting harder as the section progressed. So I was rather relaxed during the break. I thought I started Quant terribly. I had to skip the first 3 questions and it got ridiculously easy towards the end. Somehow, I really destroyed the first section again. When I thought I had done I had managed to produce a result that was worse than my diagnostic test !!!!! Thanks to my ridiculous under performance, I decided to take a couple of weeks off and give it one final shot. There was no way I was that bad at verbal. I passed the NY freaking bar exam with flying colours as a registered foreign lawyer. After X'mas and NYE I got back into the groove and I began smashing my verbal practice sets. I was finally "getting" logicyness of SC and CR. RC had always been my strong suit.

Exam 3 (Online) - 26 Jan 2021

It all went downhill from the moment I had to type in the chat window to request somebody to "send a proctor" as nobody turned up for a good 30 mins! The system check showed really good internet speeds but the interface was a bit laggy that day. It took forever (literally 2-3 seconds on the timer each time I clicked 'next') for a new question to appear. At one point without about 20 mins to go on Quant I clicked the "next" button 3 or 4 times and to my absolute horror the window closed. Mr Proctor was probably taking the traditional Republic Day nap. He just didn't respond to my "HELLO? Are you there? WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED? CAN YOU PLEASE TAKE ME BACK INTO THE EXAM?" for what seemed like eternity (probably 30 or 40 seconds). After fumbling his own password multiple times, he finally managed to reopen the exam window. Of course the timer hadn't paused. Why would GMAC's software ever work in favour of a student? I probably lost 4-5 mins in the process and completed 28 questions before the section ended.

3 minutes and a protein shake later I began my verbal assault (on the questions). I just sailed through the questions as if I was answering GMAT CLUB QOTD on my phone. I actually had so much time that I had to slow myself down by reading questions and checking my PoE multiple times! I finished the section with a couple of minutes to spare!
The AWA was a technical nightmare. Letters were appearing on the screen after aeons. The typing would make the MS DOS prompt on my mid '90s 286 seem fast. I also noticed the notifications about control having shifted to the proctor repeatedly flashing on screen! I don't know if the control shifting back and forth between the proctor and me made the typing slow? Are they even supposed to have control the entire time? I don't remember that happening during my previous exam. At one point I even asked him to give me control so I could type the essay properly. Anyway I managed to put together a few arguments and finished the AWA.

The score that flashed was Q43/V42 (Or was it Q42 and V43? Regardless, the '700' that flashed on my screen is etched in my memory!)

Well that was my personal best on Verbal (JUSTICE!) and a personal worst on Quant. The composite score was my personal best.

Is it fair to say that I've been screwing up the first section? It is. But the final score reflected my LSAT honed skills, so I kept quiet and didn't ask the proctor anything else. Also 600-630-700 was a straight line of improved performance. Now that I had finally smashed the V40/700 barrier and was executing close to my skills, I decided to give this one final crack.

A couple of days after my exam But then I received an ominous email which specified that my test had been flagged for admin. Last week my MBA dotcom account mentioned a score of 'T'. Apparently GMAC cancelled my score because of testing circumstances leading to the questionable validity of scores. Seriously? I get logged out, I lose time because of a technical issue and my score gets cancelled? Of course the scores are questionable. They should have been higher FFS !!! Maybe the proctor flagged off my exam because I snarkily badgered him a couple of times about the test ?
Regardless, how was this fair? I sent out multiple emails to GMAC and Examity inquiring about the about the free retest or refund.

As I was pondering my next steps the saga got even better. Yesterday, I received an email from test security with a letter stating that a "VPN was used throughout the duration" of my exam!

That does explain the laggy performance. But how is that even possible? I used the same computer and wired broadband connection on a previous attempt. As part of Examity's protocol you literally have to open task manager to show them programs that are running. This is laughable at best.

I've been banned from the GMAT online forever and can register for the physical exam only 31 days after they reactivate my account.
There does not seem to be any appeal process.

PS - I also studied for the GMAT - Target is a great off the shelf course and a complete package for most people. Especially useful for someone hitting the books after a decade and a half.
And then of course there is Bransen the smiling sensei over at GMAT Ninja who basically made me unlearn everything.