GMAT Online Experience- check in was stressful

Question

Dear GMAT club family, I have been using this platform for a very long time and today I gave my 3rd attempt at Gmat

. the first 2 attempts were given at centre with 680 & 690 scores, the main reason for low scores was verbal, with a steady quant at 49 - I wanted to improve both this time for a better score. For past 2 months i had been studying (focused on verbal) and finally gave my Online Gmat today. Now awaiting results with a little anxiety

. I wanted to share my Online GMAT experience so that you guys will take some input from this and not do the same mistakes as i've done. I am really dreading the fourth attempt (as i've already read a lot of horror stories of online gmat score dip)

... So I booked my online exam 7 days ago when i scored in the range of 730-760 on 3 GMAT prep mocks. I took a late morning slot as i am fairly active and focused at that time ( office demands it

).. I logged in to gmac website 30 min. before the exam start. I think in 2 mins i got the link to ' Begin Exam'. I was asked to download and launch the software - upload my phone number - and select the way of uploading the pictures of my environment - either laptop or phone. I - like a fool - selected phone. While uploading photo of my ID, my phone (iphone) was allowing me to only use the front camera and i could not take a decent photo of my ID.. after struggling for 10 minutes and bending my hands and wrists to angles humanly impossible i took a picture and uploaded it.. finally the check in completed and the exam was about to begin. I was trying to calm my nerves to begin the exam, when suddenly the proctor asked to again upload the photo of my ID

I told him it is not possible to upload photo with my phone and asked him if i can do it with laptop, thankfully he agreed and started the check in again to upload all photos... I uploaded the photo of my ID and the exam started... The quant questions were tough.. beginning 2 questions were easy and then the difficulty level was suddenly at 800+ (at least thats how i felt it during exam). The verbal was another story - the questions were tough and as i knew my verbal was weak i was doing all the questions a bit slowly. for the last 10 questions i had ~ 18 mins left and i was feeling confident at that time thinking now this is the end part and i will get 1 RC, typical SC and maybe 1 or 2 CR and i could do it in 18 mins. My last 10th question was a dense para on history and i took more time than i should have.. i started panicking and somehow solved the questions with little confidence - i got another RC - a long read with 3 para on another dense topic - i think i read few lines and skimmed and solved questions with 10% confidence - and for a last question 1 got a long CR with 1 min to end of the exam - while reading the 2nd line of the the argument i saw the timer with 12 secs remaining - i clicked on an option blindly and submitted the answer................

I think my biggest mistake was not counting my RCs, I think i had solved 2 RCs before the last 10th questions and was thinking i wont get a 4th RC. Also time management - during my mocks, i was able to solve last 10 verbal questions even in 12 mins (getting them correct), and maybe thats why i was not worried about timing my performance properly for last questions and did worse. In my opinion, online Gmat is much tougher than the offline one and a strong understanding of all the skills (most importantly comprehension) is a must!!

Toffelfabriken · Answer

Time management is indeed very important for the GMAT. Some students underestimate its importance because when you do mock tests and there is "nothing at stake", it is (relatively) easy to keep a cool head and focus and finish on time. That often changes on the actual exam, when you have a reason to be nervous. If there is no predetermined strategy for what to do when things do not go as planned, it can easily snowball until you are sitting there with 3 minutes to solve 10 questions.

Anyway, very sad to hear that you did not get the score you were aiming for. The good thing, however, is that you know exactly what to work on in order to do way better next time. Keep it up and good luck next time

Anyway, very sad to hear that you did not get the score you were aiming for. The good thing, however, is that you know exactly what to work on in order to do way better next time. Keep it up and good luck next time

SpiceRunner · Answer

Sorry to hear that you had a poor experience, but maybe the payout is a stellar score.

On a related note, I thought all Verbal have 4 RCs. In fact based on some of the analysis done here, the takeaway was that RC weighs more heavily than SC. For that matter I keep a note of how many RCs I've completed in the test. My understanding is that one out of the four RCs will always have 4 questions, and the rest will have three each.

Is that not right?

Toffelfabriken · Answer

While it has been a while since I did the GMAT, I seem to remember that the GMAT always features 3 "short" RC passages and 1 "long" one.

Ksmew · Answer

I think that’s right.. 4 RC is the norm. I should have calculated my RCs ..

Posted from my mobile device

Hovkial · Answer

The community here will appreciate you sharing your online test experience. Every little detail is important for preparation.

Some observations:

Quant:  You mentioned that after the first two easy questions (easy to you), you suddenly encountered some difficult questions. This is likely very normal. You must have answered those first two questions correctly and within time and so the algorithm chose to present you with harder questions to test your limits. The algorithm will be constantly adjusting your score, so you will likely see these kinds of jumps. This may be unnerving but you should remember that this is normal functioning of the test and that you should keep at the test with your normal ways.

Verbal:  There will definitely be at least four passages. If you are performing well, one of the passages can be longish and challenging, both with respect to time requirements and question difficulty. The best way to prepare for RC is to definitely practice. Only very test takers score well without having done some amount of practice. During the test, you could also mark down the number of passages that you encounter. This will help you to control your timings.

Your check-in process was certainly stressful and that could also have contributed to the timing issues. You now have some knowledge and you could use that to make some changes for the retest.

Ksmew · Answer

Thank you.. I agree, a predetermined strategy is important for not repeating such errors. 
What is the best strategy to do the time management in your opinion? I somewhere read that dividing time for sets of 9 questions and strictly following that is the best way to manage time.....

Posted from my mobile device

Toffelfabriken · Answer

There are quite a few things you can do. For example, you don't want to make multiple mistakes in a row, since you're penalized relatively hard for that. This can often happen if you end up with a lot of questions left at the end of the timer, forcing you to rush through them all. One way to avoid it is to be prepared to skip questions if you end up behind on time. If you see that you've got 10 questions left, but only 18 minutes to answer them, you try to find a question that you are reasonably certain you have the correct answer for. After that, you immediately guess on the next question. That way, you save a couple of minutes and get yourself back on track without too heavy a penalty.

chrtpmdr · Answer

Can you explain the check in process a little bit further? I don't understand why you could only use the front camera on your phone? How does that work, they're either going to ask whether you want to upload the pictures with your phone or with your webcam, am I assuming this right?

Ksmew · Answer

Sure.. so when you begin the exam it asks you to download the software- do the system check- and input your phone number.
Next step is to select either phone or laptop to submit the pictures of your environment.
If you select phone, you’ll receive a text message with link. Once you open the link, you can take photo of yourself, your id and your surroundings (front of desk, back of desk, left &right corner)
in my case (iPhone 6) front camera was on for self photo and id. 
It was difficult to take a picture of my passport using front camera... and the link was not allowing me to change it to back camera (there is only one icon to take photo) 
you can retake photos and I think I tried for 10 minutes to get a decent picture....

Posted from my mobile device

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Ksmew,

Sorry to hear about your GMAT. Thank you for sharing your experience. If you need any advice moving forward, feel free to reach out.

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