VERY BAD TEST DAY EXPERIENCE

Hi everyone,

I just took the GMAT second time and scored 640( Q45 V33). Unlike my first attempt, my second attempt went very badly and I want to share my frustrated experience so that future test takers can avoid it.

Like many other test takers on gmatclub, I also think about one day, I will be writing a victory topic about conquering the GMAT, but in no way I thought that I would instead write about my bad experience on the test day.

Let me start from the beginning to finish so you have a complete picture about my test experience.

I scheduled my test in the afternoon and arrived at the test center early. Everything was fine at this point, the proctor handled me exam rules to read, told me to sign my e-signature, and took my picture and palm vein. She then asked me whether I have any questions for her, I then asked her whether I can get a new note if I run out of it (I asked this question because I read in a topic on gmatclub about a test taker being refuse another new note because the test center had to preserve its notes for other test takers).

She replied to me that there will be a cloth in my desk so that I can erase the note. I was taken back a bit because in my first attempt, I did not have any cloth but do have additional notes, and nowhere in GMAT handbook had mentioned about the presence of a cloth( so no additional notes but a cloth).

There are two things I noticed about this cloth: It is wet and stinking, but I quickly forgot about it as the exam began. Things went fine with the AWA and IR portions of the test. Now things started to went seriously wrong after the first break, I did not remember how many times I used the cloth to erase the note but my hand was very sticky and was very blue (the ink from the wet cloth stained all over my hand). I did not pay any attention about my hand at first, and used my bare hand to eat some foods without realizing that the ink has come in contact with the food.

My stomach started to rumble at the fourth questions and I had to refrain from the need to go to the bathroom for the rest of the test, and as this were not enough, when I came to the eighteenth or so questions, I had written all over the notes and had to erase the last page every one or two questions, as the questions at this point are all very lengthy and require a lot of spaces. This repeated act of erasing ultimately eat up into my time and I think the total amount of time I spent on erasing the note average to may be a time taken to solve a question. I ended up guessing on a last couple of questions.

At the second break, I washed my hand with soap but the ink would not come off. I do not eat any food for fear that I may hurt my stomach even more, I just drink some water and come back hurriedly to the exam room. Despite my rumbling stomach, I tried my best to stay positive during the verbal section and tried not to think about my Quant score, hoping it may somehow come off better than I imagined. But my bad luck did not end here, the two pens provided to me started to run out of ink, I had to swing the pen back and forth every questions to snuggle out any ink remain in it. I feel completely hopeless and only tried to finish the section on time. After the survey questions, the disappointed 640 score pop up, and the cancel or accept score screen shows up. I clicked on the accept options, but when I come out of the room, I asked the proctor for my unofficial score report and she told me that because I canceled my score, how could I get a report.

At this point you can imagining how distressed I am, but I am able to keep my cool and very politely told the proctor that I clicked on the accepted option correctly. She replied to me with a hint of disbelief in her voice: “If I clicked on the right option, then the printer would print out my score report”. I assumed that she probably thought that I accidentally clicked on the cancel option and wanted to talk my way to have she reinstall my score or something like that.

I told her that my score this time, although not match my targeted score, is higher than the first score, why would I want to cancel it?

And to that she replied with an even sarcasm voice: “How could she know about that but the connection between the printer and the computer was fine” I then patiently asked her to please check back again in her computer. She did not even bother replied back to me and let me standing there clueless but she did come back to her computer and typed something. So after a couple of long and silence minutes and after another test taker received her score report, the proctor picked up her phone and was looking for a person (I assumed she asked for the technician). She printed out my score report on her computer and when I asked her whether this is a technical problem, she admitted with a lower voice than before. What a remarkable test day experience!

Take aways:

1/ Ask the proctor to provide additional notes and pens after a break rather than a cloth in my case ( This is very important).

2/ And if your hands are plague with ink from the pen, try to wash it off and do not use that hand to eat food.

I have a couple of feedbacks I want to say, wholeheartedly, to GMAC:

I believe GMAC should try its best to deliver test taker a consistent experience no matter where that test taker is on the globe. GMAC should try to ensure all of the things it provides test takers on the test date are in best conditions and match that stated in the GMAC guideline. Why there are some test center refuse to give addition notes and why there are some give cloth to test taker?

Rather than survey about how GMAC can improving customer experience by adding new features, I believe GMAC should also survey about how test taker feels about the lamented paper and the pens providing and whether it should work to improve these things. In my opinion, the lamented paper and the pens come with it is not good choice and GMAC should try to look for the alternatives. These things seriously influent test taker performance. My apology if the readers find this inappropriate but after the test, first thing I did when I came back home was going to the bathroom because of my stomach and I had to use the bathroom several times later that night.

2/ I do not know the people of a test center are employed by GMAC or Pearson Vue but please take it from a guy who work in the hospitality service, the attitude of an employee, whether part time or full time employee, towards a customer greatly affect customer’s perception on the image and the level of professional of a company.
In my experience, I believe that treating customers like they certainly wrong before fully knowing about the cause of a problem and shifting blame to customers are never a good idea.

I know that this proctor is in no way represent GMAC or Pearson Vue and that she may be tired after 4 hours watching the computer screens but test takers are probably also very tired too after a long test day. Why the need to make both parties suffer more by arguing about the causes of a problem with an absolute certainty that the test taker is wrong rather than resolve the problem at hand.

While I totally satisfied with everything in my first attempt from the notes to the proctor (the proctor even tried to cheer me up after I received my first score), I cannot say the same about my second attempt. The second attempt feels like a 180 degree opposition compare to the first. It’s a disappointment.

The service provided in the second attempt does not worth the money and does not match that GMAC stated in its marketing materials. This bad experience seriously affect my score and the score is not a true reflection of my ability. I know that people are not supported to use prep tests to compare with the real thing but in every other preps, I scored very near the 700 range and in the exam pack 2 of GMAT prep, I even scored 700, all the tests taken full-length, exam-like condition, in the same time as of my real test, especially the exam pack 2 tests were taken first time and the questions are all first encounter, I never see any questions in the exam pack 2 anywhere on the internet before my prep tests, so I do not believe that prep score will be inflating much and my real score will differ that much from the GMAT prep.