GMAT ONLINE - EVERYTHING WE KNOW!
(this post is stickied at the top to provide a quick reference about GMAT Online and GMAT Online ENHANCED version)

• Oct 6, 2021 GMAT Online Update: the number of Online Attempts is going up from 2 to 8. All GMAT attempts can be online.
• Free unlimited score reports are going away for tests taken after Oct 20th; previously taken tests, reports must be sent by Jan 2022.
• ENHANCED ONLINE GMAT Debriefs:
  
  • See the Full List in Share GMAT Experience Forum
  • 5/23 - 730 (Q49, V40) - by vijaykhot
  • 5/21 - 710 (Q49, V40) - same split as above but 710 by rudywip
  • 5/20 - reports of several initial tests automatically canceled and rescheduled
• Major change after May 20th is addition of AWA, 2 breaks, and your GMAT score now presented at the end of your test (takes 24-48 hrs for the score to show up in your profile; score is reportable to schools in about a week but sometimes may take up to 20 days to grade the AWA)
• You can take the test twice - this remains the main issue with the virtual GMAT testing
• Physical dry-erase white-board is allowed - more is here
• Pre-Exam Checklist
• Disconnected in the middle of the test? Try this if nothing else works!
• POLL: How long did it take you to get your GMAT Online score?
• Are you Chinese, Iranian, or from any other location restricted for GMAT Online Exam? Read here!
• What to do if your test gets canceled in the middle and How to reschedule it! (advice by sebo08 )

Whiteboard Questions

• Everything about Physical Dry-Erase whiteboards for the GMAT?
• Practice with a Virtual Whiteboard

GMAT Online Debriefs
_________________

Dear mcelroytutoring,

Did GMAC change its policy? Because I have heard from others' experience that you can leave during 5-min break, if you show the proctor clean whiteboard.

You are allowed to take a bathroom break if you want but you have to ask the proctor and get the ok first. I have seen that most proctors allow but some do not. So it depends on the proctor you get.

Hit kudos if this helped.


_________________

You can take a bathroom break during your official break. Many people including Souvik did not even ask for permission. They just got up and left during the break to use the restroom. What’s the point of a break otherwise?

Many people reported that the proctors sometimes respond late and if you ask for a permission for a bathroom break, during a normal break time, you may not hear back until the break is even over. Which kind of proves that you’re not supposed to ask for a bathroom break during your allocated break time. You can ask the proctor ahead of time if you wish but your. Keep that in mind. Most proctor many tests and don’t know the intricacies of GMAC’s policies and will need a few mins to look them up.

Posted from my mobile device
_________________

Refer here the policy for break time- https://www.mba.com/frequently-asked-qu ... #question9

Having read it, I also called GMAC customer care as per the discussion a candidate is not allowed to leave the system without the prior permission from proctor.
So it is prudent that one asks at the beginning of the exam and make it clear to the proctor that he/she would take a break
_________________

Hi all,

Where do we see the results for the GMAT Online?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi AkshayChungade01

As long as the items are more than an arm's length, the presence of these items in the room does not matter.
Make sure these items are not reachable from your seat; your table and surrounding should not have any extra items than those mentioned in the list.

Hope this helps !!

Thank you for the correction, mira93: you can indeed leave your seat (bathroom break, snack break, splash water on your face, etc.) during the optional 5-minute break between Verbal and IR. In my opinion, however, the test is basically over at that point--and I guess I just wanted to play it safe after having my first attempt cancelled by proctors--so on both of my own attempts, I made the choice to continue the exam without leaving my seat whatsoever.

The GMAT Online is a significantly different experience from the structure of the test-center GMAT, where you are allowed to take a bathroom break between the two most important sections, and the only 2 sections that contribute to your composite score / "total score", aka Quant and Verbal--and you also get the option of choosing which section goes first. (I don't recommend the traditional order of AWA / IR / Q / V, as it puts the all-important Verbal section at the tail end of the exam, where you are likely to be the most fatigued.)



Don't try to leave your seat during the 1-minute break between Quant and Verbal, though--or your exam will be invalidated!
_________________

Do we have a one minute break between Quant and Verbal?
_________________

Hi patto, there is an optional 30-second break between the Quant and Verbal sections on the GMAT Online.

I can't find an official GMAC source to verify this, but I do remember this short break--more of a "brief pause in-between sections," really--from the 2 times I took the exam.
_________________

Apologies if these questions have already been answered. Promise I tried to look for the answers..

1. I took the GMAT in-center today. Do you know if I could do the GMAT Online in 4 days and then wait another 12 days to repeat the GMAT in the center? I know there is a 16 day gap between each GMAT Exam In-Center but I am not sure if I could do the GMAT online in between.

2. GMAT Online: are we allowed to use both sides of the physical whiteboard? I read that we can but I wanted to be 100% sure

3. GMAT In-Center: if I cancel my today's GMAT score will I still be able to get the ESR? Also if in the future I don't get a better score than what I got today, could I pay to get back my score (so "cancel" the cancellation of my score)?

Many thanks in advance!!

Apologies if these questions have already been answered. Promise I tried to look for the answers..

1. I took the GMAT in-center today. Do you know if I could do the GMAT Online in 4 days and then wait another 12 days to repeat the GMAT in the center? I know there is a 16 day gap between each GMAT Exam In-Center but I am not sure if I could do the GMAT online in between.
Yes

2. GMAT Online: are we allowed to use both sides of the physical whiteboard? I read that we can but I wanted to be 100% sure
Yes

3. GMAT In-Center: if I cancel my today's GMAT score will I still be able to get the ESR? No Also if in the future I don't get a better score than what I got today, could I pay to get back my score (so "cancel" the cancellation of my score)?
Yes

Many thanks in advance!!

That's Great!!!
Should I ask for it? or How does it work?
_________________

No, you don't have to ask for this 30-second break. It's a stretch to call it a "break," really--it's basically just a brief "pause" or "buffer" section between the Quant and Verbal sections. Again, it's important to remember that you can't get up from your seat or even go off camera during those 30 seconds, or your scores will be invalidated.

Another way to think about it is that the Verbal section doesn't begin as soon as you confirm your final answer on Quant: you are given exactly one minute to gather yourself and get ready for the next section.
_________________

Just got my scores, some advice to give back to this helpful community:

Online exam test day advice experience:
1. Don't drink too much water you don't get to use the bathroom until after both Q and V.
2. You get a 30 second break between Q and V, if you manage to finish Q early, just let the timer run and submit with ~30 seconds left (or however confident you are in your clicking ability), and also let the timer run for the 30 second break so you can maximize. Fatigue during the verbal section was high.
3. I asked during the 5 min break to use the bathroom, the proctor didn't reply for some reason so I just went. Nothing happened I still got my score and everything, but I would suggest at least asking.
4. Try not to cover your mouth, look away from the screen, or make any noises, the proctor may tell you to stop doing those things and it was super distracting and wasted precious time because the chat window pops up every time and covers half the screen.
5. IR is usually my slowest section but I finished in like 17 minutes somehow, super easy and short questions too. There was some page misalignment in the answer choices which made it hard to read but not a dealbreaker and i provided that feedback after the exam.
6. Took it on 7/6 at 10am and got scores on 7/13 7pm.
7. Came out of it feeling very confused, because there were hard questions but I felt confident I got them right, which was weird because usually when I scored high I felt like it was easy, and when I didn't score high I immediately knew it felt hard. I guess this is the adaptive part of the test working per design?
8. Check in about 15-30 mins early to take pictures of your desk etc. It took a few mins and another few minutes to get matched up to a proctor. I ended up starting the exam about 5 mins earlier than my scheduled time because I signed in 15 minutes early. Finished in about 2hr 25 mins.

Practice exam history:
1. 680 49Q 35V, July 2019, diagnostic cold attempt, Kaplan
2. 680 45Q 39V, Aug 2019, didn't study and took the same diagnostic again
3. 700 48Q 38V, Apr 2020, studied on and off for about 4 months over the course of 8 months and took the same Kaplan diagnostic again haha
4. 640 44Q 33V, May 2020 seriously studied for 1 month about 5 hrs per week on average, took GMAT Club CAT. GMAT club math questions were definitely harder, some were AMC 10 level olympiad type questions and concepts especially in combinatorics and number theory
5. 650 44Q 35V, May 2020 Took GMAT club CAT #2 the next day
6. 640 42 Q 35V, Jul 2020 3 days before GMAT, studied hardcore for 2 months, took official GMAT practice #1. At this point I'm super concerned so I look up some strategies and it was a game changer. First impression was this test was VERY different in content and feel to Kaplan and GMAT club practice tests.
7. 730 48Q 42V, 2 days before GMAT, took GMAT club CAT #3
8. 760 49Q 46V, day before GMAT, Official GMAT practice #2
9. 780 50Q 51V 8IR real GMAT

I'm very happy with my score, it's my first attempt. Minor question shouldn't 50q and 51v be 790 or even 800 territory? Does this mean everyone who took this test scored really high?

General advice:
In total I studied around 100 hours and did around 700 practice verbal questions and got 71% correct, and 200 quant questions 82% correct, but I really think quality>quantity. These were all high difficulty questions, no point doing easy questions. This isn't a lot of reps compared to some crazy numbers I've seen on these forums but I spent only around 30% of my time doing questions, 20% reviewing wrong answers, and around 50% of my time painstakingly analyzing and collecting stats on what types of questions I get wrong, why I get them wrong, any patterns to wrong questions such as how much time I take, what topic the verbal topics are on etc. Anything to find any patterns.

Exam Strategy: Key for me was exam strategy. I was attacking the GMAT like it was my actual job and solving all questions fully, understanding all topics completely, making sure I QC and everything is correct. This was very slow and I usually left around 2-5 questions blank at the end, even though I got almost all questions that I do attempt correct. As you can see it resulted in my low practice scores up until practice #7 when I finally figured this out.
Key priorities when flexing your exam strategies: 1. Definitely prioritize getting all questions done 2. then try to maximize % 3. then try to nail the last few questions, even if at the expense of getting some middle questions wrong in the 10s.

Verbal: I discovered I was weakest in Sentence Correction>Weaken>biology and society related questions. So when I encounter these on the exam I slow down and read very thoroughly and map out the logic, vs passages and sentences about economics for example I trust my first gut and breeze through. I figured out I was good at SC and RC, so I focused my questions on CR and specifically on question types that I was weak in. Also it helps to know which topics you are more comfortable with and interested in and compensate. I'm a consultant and most of the economics/finance related concepts are interesting and pretty basic for me to grasp, but topics like biology and society etc. in which I have little experience and frankly, interest, are harder for me to not only conceptually understand, but also put in the mental effort to understand. So when I encounter these topics, I force myself to slow down and map out the topics and logic.

Quant: I'm weakest at combinatorics, number theory, so if I encounter a difficult problem I allocate more time until I'm on pace (i.e. solve question 5 until I have 52 mins then guess and move on. thankfully I didn't need to guess on any questions during the actual exam) and make inferences and speed through without checking on topics I'm strong in such as rates, algebra, geometry, set theory. I also only picked out the hardest questions for quant, and split them out into 23 topics. If I got 6 questions in a row correctly I moved to the next topic.

IR: honestly didn't study at all. I must have only did IR once in my first ever diagnostic and once on my first practice GMAT. Got 7 in both but left 2/12 questions blank. On the real GMAT I somehow finished the section in 17 minutes, got an 8... weird but i'm not really indexing too much on this section.

Full time professionals: For those of you working, my senior director gave me this advice and it really helped, but I basically took a week off work, and locked myself in for 9 days and just studied my ass off 9am - 6pm. Progress was insane. I think doing 1 hr per night after work is necessary and good in the months leading up, but it takes a bit of intensive focus in the last stretch to really create the muscle memory to do this test. I really don't think this test is about knowledge at all, it's specifically about how good you are at taking the GMAT. Knowledge and intelligence helps but it's primarily how conditioned you are to take this test.

These forums helped me a lot throughout this process so I'm just happy to give back a bit now that I'm done with the GMAT forever.

Hello,

I took my test last Saturday, and got my scores earlier today: 770 50Q 46V. This was in line with what I was expecting, since I had scored 760-790 in the official practice exams, but I hoped to score a little higher. Even so, I am happy with the results, and relieved that I am done with the GMAT.

I was a little anxious in the days that preceded the test, mainly because the GMAC's policies seemed too broad and vague. I had to travel to my parents house on the weekend to take the test in a room that complied with their requirements. Besides, this was my first time taking the exam, and I was a little unsure of what to expect.

Everything went smoothly technically. However, during the test, my face was out of the frame for an instant when I was dealing with a tricky quant problem, and the proctor warned me instantly, but gave me no assurance that my score would not be cancelled because of this. This distracted me during the rest of the test, but I tried not to worry about it and was able to finish in time.

The difficulty level of the questions was similar to that of the official practice exams, but the exam seemed less responsive to my performance. However, as the GMAC says, candidates are not that good at guessing difficulties, so I just focused on giving my best.

Wow, great score! You are correct that 50Q / 51V is normally 790, so that means you must have scored a "low" Q50 (Quant and Verbal subscores are rounded to the nearest integer) to earn a 780 composite.

For context, a GMAT tutor colleague of mine recently scored Q49 / V51 / 780.

You will find that most GMAT Quant + Verbal composite score conversions have a plus/minus of 10 points.
_________________

Thanks so much for sharing and WOW - amazing score!
I have posted a copy of your debrief in the Share GMAT Experience Forum: https://gmatclub.com/forum/780-50q-51v- ... 29407.html
(Thank you for sharing your story and contributing to GMAT Club )

Q50, V51 Should be a very high 790/780 sore and you are pretty close to the max. There is not a ton of data available but Quant/Verbal scores and the total score are calculated using a different algorithm, so it is possible to have a few combinations. However, we have learned https://gmatclub.com/forum/q51-v50-253258.html is that 800 actually requires a perfect Q51/V51 score. (this table is not quite correct for the 800 scores: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-scores-83890.html). Anyway, awesome awesome score! Thank you!!!



_________________

Thank you so much for your debrief! Very good score! Amazing Verbal score too!
(Sorry about the proctor throwing off your quant)

I also reposted yours so it does not get drowned in this topic.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-online- ... 29408.html



_________________

Hi! Well I have few questions.

1. I ran the system test through mobile hotspot. It went through. Is it Ok to use a mobile hotspot during Gmat online? If not can I use a Dongle?

2. What is the time deadline for rescheduling the exam and charges for it?

IMP mobile hotspot is risky deal. It can get disconnected anytime and moreover proctor may not allow you to keep any mobile near your laptop or test place. Did you give any gmat 3 hours test using mobile hotspot ?

I understand from where you are coming, in this covid situation it is difficult to get wifi or dongle.