GRE at Home - It's Official!

Yeah! Moreover no one needs a hacker or a wearable device to do these stuffs. Anyone who is familiar with scripting languages can take advantage of this. Screenshots, screencast or even handing over the control of my system to a 3rd person. The possibilities are limitless as long as one has control on his or her device before the start of the exam.

You are right that an individual test taker can already game the system. But "Special Homes" can get a lot more creative!

For example: The plain looking monitor can be overlaid with a transparent screen. When the remote proctors need to check the surroundings, they will not see anything unseemly. After test is started, the screen will flash answers to test takers. A "smart screen" will also tell test takers to pretend to think hard for how many seconds before proceeding.

Imagine a test prep class for GRE / TOEFL / GMAT in which all students must learn how to pretend to take the tests and respond naturally to the "on screen instructions". Funny? Yes. Possible? Sure!

Wow the test taker just turned into a Bond villain

Posted from my mobile device
_________________

The is definitely great news but not for me - India and GRE. Hope GMAT reflects something similar.
Well GRE must have brainstormed about the test in home conditions with extremes considered, what vyshak and zhanbo have mentioned raises eyebrows - the curiosity rover would pause for a moment on hearing this .

How Proctor works:
I have had proctor account four years ago. The experience certainly differs from GMAT's not sure of GRE galaxies apart. After creating your account you confirm the test details then schedule/timings of test(might be that they provide you a specific time - i forgot) and then you are assigned a proctor who first checks the system(not sure what as i was naive those things then). After that you are supposed to show the room(live feed) where are taking test by moving the laptop/webcam 360deg without you blocking the view - during this time proctor is always taking a note of the surrounding conditions.

The odd part:
While you are taking test the proctor is watching you which is kind of spooky - a mutated version of combination of a physical person and a webcam/CCTV. For some it might be distracting as i found it so.

The good part:
No distraction from fellow table knocking test taker.

PS: In 4 years it must have changed but ironically only honest test takers suffer. I used chrome on windows 7 PC.

Let's see how things materialize.
_________________

Lol. If ETS opens up a million dollar hack challenge similar to what Apple does, many folks will walk away with millions, all by working from home

[/quote]

This is too creative for it to be true. Even the proctors would not be able to concentrate for that long(3+hours).
You should become a proctor for ETS - they will be happy to have you.
_________________

Thanks so much for sharing this!
What about breaks? How does that work? Anything about your phone/electronics? Anything else you can share?

Thx.
BB.



_________________

Hope prudence will prevail and business schools will not accept the GRE scores churned out in the phase of test from home with latent hacks. GMAT test takers must raise this issue with business schools if GMAC is not ready to raise any concern.

Posted from my mobile device

There are ways to curb cheating and police it and prevent most of it. Don’t get your blood pressure up.

Posted from my mobile device
_________________

And there are ways to overcome so called foolproof mechanism. We can't just blindly believe in ETS's abilities to ensure true and fair testing conditions.

bb
I remember that the test was shorter than GMAT. Not sure of breaks don't remember anything about that. Phone /electronics is a strict no including calculators.
Test quant was harder than GMAT but straightforward. Only two section math and english(not GMAT verbal).

I have vague memory of that experience so this much only that i could recall.


_________________

It will be interesting to see how this affects score distributions.

Posted from my mobile device

It will be... we were all expecting quite a bit of change when GMAC announced section order option - that was equivalent of going to the Moon in terms of GMAC's flexibility and test innovation so going "at home" is like light speed or castle run in 9 parsecs
_________________

GRE OFFICIALLY AT HOME, WILL GMAT FOLLOW?!

I don't think so, it's so easy to record the questions.

University are starting to not request gmat for the application processes.

What do u think?

Posted from my mobile device

For some countries under extreme lockdown (Such as France, Spain, Italy...), they better be tolerant for the places to take the exams not to ruin some candidates' chances...but what an incredible piece of news, I can't believe it....let's hope that GMAC will come to reason and make it happen as well!

Lol as for GMAC always wait for ETS to innovate and they follow suite.
But I think the difficulty level should be raised for those taking it at home.


Posted from my mobile device
_________________

I do not think GMAT will follow this example. GMAC already mailed last week about waiver of reschedule fee.

I hope that everyone understands that any individual that attempts to cheat at the "GRE at home" test will compromise the remaining majority of test takers. Needless to say I hope that the community of test takers will demonstrate prudence and will repudiate the idea of cheating.

Update: this morning I have spoken with technical support representatives from both UProctor and ETS. The former said that "Windows is not a must, but if ETS mandates Windows, then it is a must". The latter said that Windows is a must. I asked about Mac computer running Windows, but the support rep insisted that the computer has to be a Windows machine.

So, unless one wants to experiment with bootcamp on Mac and have a Windows machine next to him in the room, I dare say Windows is a must for the "GRE at home" test.