Are there any debriefs of people that took the GRE exam at home?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi Guys,
I have a question if anyone can address would be great.
My testing center is Pearson Vue Mumbai, India. I had booked GMAT for 25th April as the lock-down was announced till 15th April. Now lock-down has been extended to 30th April and there are no dates available as of now in May for me to re-schedule. Should I cancel my test and wait for launch of GMAT at home? When are they launching GMAT at home? Will I get a full refund if I cancel my test now? I want to give my GMAT as early as possible, what should be the best thing I should do now.

At least GMAC had the common sense to drop the clunky "Interim GMAT" title in favor of the far more obvious (and better!) "Online GMAT," which suggests that it's not actually temporary, but instead here to stay.

mcelroytutoring

Can you share the link? I don't have the email and probably won't get.

Thanks!
_________________

Hey guys,

So I took the GRE at home version after about 1.5 weeks of preparation this weekend and it did not go well.

There were tons of glitches and major interruptions. Something that everyone will have to embrace in this format I guess. The following are my recommendations if anyone is planning to take the GRE at home or GMAT at home version.

1. Get mozilla firefox asap. Google chrome doesn't work with ProctorU very well. They have to run their own extension on the browser and it gives you a lot of trouble. For instance, I had a monitor hooked upto my personal laptop and an external Logitech camera. Google kept trying to connect to my laptop webcam and not my external webcam. This involved an hour of trouble shooting by their technician and one guy almost said that I dont have appropriate equipment for the exam. I showed him that my external webcam works just fine on Skype and then after almost an hour of delibration and installing firefox, they got the exam started. I was already tired by that time.

2. Do not underestimate GRE nor the marathon of an exam that it is. It is long and fatigue gets you by the end of the exam. I had a migraine and could barely keep my eyes open. The whole ordeal took me 6.5 hrs in place of 3.45 hrs. The two essay sections are very long and the experimental section is another lengthy addition to the exam.

In short, please practice with essays when you give the mocks. Only Kaplan gives you 5 sections (including experimental ones) for the mock exams and I'd recommend practicing with Kaplan exams.

3. GRE quant is very hard.

The mock exams made the GRE quant look so easy but the final exam was brutal. I'd say harder than GMAT quant. I dont know if ETS made the GRE harder for the home edition or not but the qs were nowhere near the difficulty I faced during my mock exams. I can say the same for my verbal section as well. The passages were extremely dense and long. I guess this is where GRE differs from GMAT in the sense that its not adaptive and GRE score purely depends on how many qs you can get correct. So you dont benefit from getting a harder section in the exam.

My scores leading upto the exams were;

1. 322 (Q162-V160)
2. 326 (Q166-V 160) and
3. 326 (Q166- V160).

But my final exam score was 311 (Q159 and V 152). I believe that the technical difficulties def played a role in hampering my score. I underperformed by a huge margin.

Contrary to the feelings of most people on this forum regarding taking the exam from home, I think I prefer the exam center experience over home anyday. It's also very distracting when the proctors try to chat with you during the exam and ask you to constantly remain in the camera at all times.

Concluding remarks:

Make sure that you are prepared for the ponderous, interminable and protracted version of the GRE exam, especially if you have been studying for GMAT and making the switch just to take advantage of the at home version and meet your deadlines. If you can wait this Covid-19 crisis out and go write it in the test centers then please do so. I'd still recommend the shorter GMAT version over this long test anyday.
Download firefox and be ready.
Finally, practice all the sections of the GRE in your mock exams, including the two essays and do not skip any sections.

Hope my debrief helps you and you dont make the same mistakes I made. Good luck with your exams and I hope everyone stays safe!

Hi xzip03,

So I would be really surprised if any one is successful in cheating. The exam is remotely controlled by the proctor. They take control over your screen and monitor it at all time.

Before the exam begins, you do a complete scan of the exam room. They ask you to show your desk, walls, cover any bookshelves with blankets etc. Very thorough and I doubt if anyone can get away with installing a camera. Evene wall hangings and posters are being asked to cover up. They made me show them my desk and the shelves and everything. So there is no way you could get a cheat sheet. Also, I bought a white board from staples so you can only fit 2 problems at one time before you have to erase it and make room for new qs.

The scan happens again after your 10 minute break and the clock just doesn't stop and the exam does not automatically begin. Thats why it takes this long. Proctors are usually very nice. They dont care about your hands they just want your face to be visible at all times and inside the video box where you are being recorded.

Hope this helps and ask me anything you need to know and I'll be happy to answer.

Hi Zhanbo,

You are welcome. As you’ve previously taken the GRE and scored really high on it I don’t anticipate you facing any difficulties as such. I was just thrown off by how long the whole exam was. And it was my bad experience which may just have been one case out of many. You may not experience any delays, esp if you download the Firefox browser.

Good luck on your exam and I’m wishing you well

Hopefully your account of the exam will be a lot better than mine.

Posted from my mobile device

Holy ****!

Kellogg waived the test requirement.

How many applications will be submitted now?

More information here: http://blogs.kellogg.northwestern.edu/i ... dium=email

Registrations are now OPEN for the Online GMAT!

More information here:

https://www.mba.com/exams/gmat-online

They've priced it at 200$ haha I was pretty close with 195$...

"The total exam time is approximately 3 hours -- 2 hours 45 minutes for the exam and an additional 15 minutes to check into the online proctored system. You will be allowed one, optional 5-minute break before you begin the Integrated Reasoning section. "

1 break of 5 mins thats it?


Retesting
At this time the GMAT™ Online Exam can only be taken once. Currently, score cancellations and retakes will not be available, with the exception of verified technical issues.

The GMAT™ Online Exam will not count toward your yearly nor lifetime exam attempt limits.