I everyone, I'm Bhavin the CEO of Magoosh, and I'm here with Pete Rossmann so Pete is a GMAT
expert at Magooosh and yesterday he took the GMAT at home that's right the
GMs offered at home because of covid-19 GMAT exams have been cancelled and so he's
one of the early folks that take the GMAT at home and he's gonna share a bit
about his experience yeah so Pete how just tell us about how it went overall
how are you feeling now I'm feeling good I think it went well
given the adjustments that had been made on the fly but overall the experience
did go a little smoother than I expected it to so that was nice
okay and let's start with uh just walk us through the check-in process. Your in a room
by yourself have to be in a room by yourself I can't have anyone else in the
room with you you're allowed to check-in up to 30 minutes before the test so mine
was at 6:00 so at 5:30 I was able to start the check-in process so what they
do is you start the check-in you download some software they check your
internet speed your microphone and a webcam both of which you need to take
the test. If your internet speed is not over I think one megabyte a
second I don't think that allow you to take the test either and I live...this
room is kind of far away from our router so if you want to get really in-depth
technically I wasn't able to use the five gigahertz band but the 2.4
gigahertz band works just fine okay and what did they what site did they use to
check your internet speed? It was...it was in app in the software, so I wasn 't
able to see. Okay well one recommendation I would have and we'll drop a link to
this in the video below is if you go to speedtest.net folks can check your
internet speed at home and it sounds like the minimum requirement
is 1 meg a seconds so that way you'll know ahead of time if you know you'll
have an internet connection we can take the GMAT at home. Yep I also want to add
you can download the software to take the
online GMAT ahead of time they won't actually let you take it but you can go
through the check-in process yourself just get a taste of what it's like. Okay
and you mentioned you have a webcam so would a webcam on your
computer work for folks who don't have an external one. Umm I imagine it would I
don't see any reason why it wouldn't I forget what the technical specs are for
the webcam but it wasn't like too like 200 megapixels or something like that.
Okay, and then in terms of proctoring did
someone talk to you could you see their face. That raises an interesting
point so when they do the test for your webcam you know they take a picture of your ID they have you take a picture of all of your
surroundings still the front two sides and back the room just make sure that
there's no paper within reach and then you see yourself in the webcam when I
got into the test there was like a little thing at the top and one of those
screens said recording it was red but it was all black so I wasn't sure if my
webcam was working or not and so there's little like button at the top it
says something like raised hand or something and they'll tell you that a
proctor has been contacted and I had to wait a minute or so and actually a chat
window opened up where I was able to talk with a proctor there. Okay did you
ever hear the Proctor's voice throughout the experience? No. Okay and did you ever
see the Proctor's face? Nope, nope it was just the chat window. Alright and then
this logistically you found a room with good internet a quiet room or you're not
gonna be disturbed that you had to show them the room. Were you able to have food
or drink or anything? Yes you are able to have a glass of water so long as glass
itself is clear anything else though would be prohibited.Okay
so just giving folks an overview of you know what you need, the general setup, so
that you're not surprised...so let's get into the test and before you get into
the details at a high level, the GMAT at home is slightly different than
the GMAT that you taken a test center because it doesn't have all the sections
so can you talk about that? Correct there is no writing section so you don't have
to worry about writing, but all the other three sections are still the
and they're full-length. The quant section is still 31 questions 62 minutes
verbal section is still 36 questions long IR is still 12 questions
long. So there's no writing section the other change is that you aren't
allowed to pick the section order it has to go quant, verbal, IR. Okay so quant, verbal, IR
but no writing section. So did you feel like that impacted you
positively in having a one less section to do? Oh yeah
possibly because you don't have to spend that mental load trying to write an
essay at some point but also you know in the in-person GMAT
you can always like shove the writing towards last two so
basically it's just 30 less minutes you're in the room so in case like
internet cuts out or something like that though that gives you like a better
window to take the test in. Okay and so I know folks are wondering about
this for the quant section you're not allowed to have a paper and pencil
you're not even allowed to have a physical whiteboard the GRE for those
who are considering the GRE does let you have a physical whiteboard so you
have use an online whiteboard can you talk about what that experience
was like and how you mentally prepared? Yeah, so I did like some practice
beforehand in math, I didn't do a lot of practice with the whiteboard
and verbal because actually I thought the wiper would actually be an
advantage because if I was to summarize arguments or reading comprehension
passages back in touch-type and just like write P1 and type a lot faster
than I could write so actually thought the whiteboard actually saved me a bit
of time in the purple section. In math though obviously it's going to be
annoying because you can't write equations or expressions like
you're used to so the one thing I did to prepare was just play around with
Microsoft Paint, try a couple different writing things, typed, and what I found
worked best for me was typing just kind of like do like one step of the me ntal
math write it down or if it was a word problem you know write assign tab out
the variables assign them or if it was a data sufficiency question
I would write what the point the question was like "find X?" which kept me on task so typing out equations is a bit
annoying some places especially when you're working with radicals there's
really no good substitute for that but and fractions as well can be kind of
annoying to kind of like cross you know cross multiply but overall it was less
annoying than I thought it'd be. Okay and it sounds like you did some
experimentation to prepare or maybe can you talk a bit about you know trying it
out? Can people download the whiteboard ahead of time do they have an
opportunity to try it or did you have to use like some third-party substitute to
get that experience? Yeah, at this point the whiteboard is not available to
download that may change depending on when you're watching this video but I
used Microsoft Paint, you can use any online web board like web whiteboard
dot com. Really the thing you're looking for is something you can type
with or something that allows you to write on a screen with
your mouse that's that should provide a close
enough approximation of what the whiteboard on the GMAT will be like. Okay
and I should also clarify for folks that I believe you're not allowed to using
tablet PC, so you're not actually gonna be able to write on the screen. Correct. Yeah
so you do need to use your mouse to write which I would say is probably
challenging but like you can type and so what can you share more about how you
did? Did you get a score after you took the test? I did not, scores are
going to appear about they said about seven days after you take the exam
you should get email or it should be in your GMAT account, so still waiting to hear
and I took it yesterday. Okay yeah so that's a big difference when you take it
a test center you see the score immediately after and here it's seven days
later. So other than the white board and the fact that there's no writing section
is there anything else that maybe would feel different to a student taking
this at home versus in a test center? Another thing yeah
I want to bring up is at home I have a fairly large monitor and I don't think
it was prepared for the text to stretch as much as it would and the buttons were
kind of small so I did have to search for them at times so keeping that in
mind it may be better just do it on like a smaller monitor or your laptop monitor
because I found that kind of annoying at times, and other times I would like click
Next and I was looking for the confirmation to move on to the next
question but the whiteboard was covering it up so if you're wondering where it is
for whiteboards in the middle of the screen you may want to move it. Oh
another thing I do want to mention about the whiteboard you are able to resize it
as big or small as you want. Okay I think those tips are really helpful and I
think one advantage the folks are gonna have by taking it at home is you can
actually practice in the room on the computer that they're going to use when
you're taking these mock tests and I might even advise that you at the same
time of day that you're gonna do the actual test and so you get into your
routine and you know Pete's been a GMAT Tudor an expert at Magoosh for a
while so what tips would you have for people preparing? First obviously prepare
with the whiteboard even if you think you're going to take the in-person GMAT
in a month or two. We don't know how long test centers can be closed so it would
be a good idea to you know just to work it into your routine trying the
whiteboard seeing how you can use it to manipulate equations that's
one thing I would suggest, another thing I would suggest is to make sure that
your--this is gonna sound weird--but make sure your mouse is...make sure the buttons
on the mouse are--except for the left and right one--turned off, because I used two
USB mouse on the test that works just fine but there were a couple of side
buttons my mouse that are like forward or back with the browser and
accidentally pressed one in the IR section and the whole screen went white
and I kind of panicked so I thought about it, like well maybe I hit back if
I hit the other one to go forward that might solve things. Which it did. But you
don't want to deal with that, I lost about a minute there, you don't want to
deal with that during the task so if you have a USB mouse just check
the button mappings beforehand and aside from like the left and right click just
turned everything else off. Okay I mean those are all I think great tips and I
think there is an element that you just highlighted where there's some
technological glitches that might come up that could throw you and so just
being mentally aware and prepared for those seems like a great idea. Are there
any sort of closing thoughts that you have about you know taking the GMAT at
home and in comparison to maybe taking the GRE at home or waiting until test
centers are open again which I know is uncertain. Yeah it was definitely an
experience, I do think the white board does have its advantages but it you know
does have that major at disadvantage of not being able to write
out equations the way you want them if you were thinking about taking the
online GMAT I wouldn't schedule it just yet I would play around with a white board
for a week or two in your practice see how that feels and if you feel like
you can handle it schedule one, keep in mind that you can only take the
online GMAT once at this point and it's not going to count against you know
your limit of five in a year or eight in a lifetime so other than that
yep the online GMAT does have its advantages though, like say you can
schedule them for pretty much anytime you want, the flexibility I think of
having getting to take it in a place of your choosing can help with the test
stress, obviously not being with write out of equations is a huge minus, but you'll just
have to play around with a white board for yourself see if the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages for you and if they do go ahead and take it online
well that's great advice and I'll also add that for folks who are
applying to business school maybe in round three, round threes have been
extended, typically the guidance is you may not want to apply in round three because
most schools are full but this year it's unclear if students will defer so if
you're applying around three and you need to take a test you can take the
online GMAT you can also take the online GRE which does let's use the physical
whiteboard or a laminated sheet of paper so if that's more comfortable for you if
you try out the online whiteboard and you don't like it you
can always take the GRE. We will share information below this video on both
more details on the online GMAT details on the online GRE so you all can sort of
see what makes sense for you. Well thanks for joining us Pete and sharing your
experience with our students I know they're gonna love hearing about the
nitty gritty and the online whiteboard and the mouse and the monitor and the
Wi-Fi because that's all the stuff that's gonna matter a come test today so
thank you. My pleasure, thanks for having me