hi guys so a couple of days ago I recorded this video in which I talked about the big changes
that are coming to the online GMAT around that 8th of April time frame. I was super excited
about it. Why? Because they're now making the online GMAT same as the In-center GMAT and in most
aspects you get to see your score right away. You essentially get to choose your section and
order, and you get the break so super exciting news. In that video, I promised that I'm going to
record a video with some best practices as to how to ensure that your internet connection,
a thing that a lot of you worried about, stays solid during the course. So this video is about that.
Now, first of all, I want to talk about something that I discovered over here.
I was doing my research for this that if you're taking the test before the 8th of April, you
will be using the Pearson VUE system to take the test. If you're taking the
test on or after the 8th of April you'll be using the examity system.
So if you're taking the test before the 8th of april, if you click on this and this is you know the mba.com
website you go to the OnVUE and this is where you'd be clicking on the on view and then downloading it.
But if you click on this link over here system test for exams on or after 8th of april, you'd
get to Examity. Examity is a leading provider of of proctored online tests in my opinion. Much more
established than on onVUE. I'm hoping that the experience there would be a lot more smooth.
But you can really see it tests everything over here.
The entire experience seems to be a lot quicker. By the way just to set some context over here.
Examity raised about 90 million dollars a big chunk of it was raised last year post when
Covid set in. So they are investing in their online proctoring. So good news exciting
news. I think there's going to be a lot more stable experience for many of you that's what
I expect overall. So doing those bare minimum test is important. That's the first step - always
do these bare minimum tests. But, beyond this how do you ensure that you still have a flawless
experience. So to talk about this I'm going to just set some context. A lot of us use wi-fi.
From a background standpoint, I'm a wireless guy. I began my career working for Nokia and even prior to
starting my first job at Nokia research, I was into wireless. I made
my first radio when I was in seventh grade. I'll tell you I do not trust wireless
technology. So someone who knows wireless, who's done channel modeling and wireless,
I know it's a very fickle environment. So I don't trust wireless technology.
Some of the best practices, the first best practice that I would recommend
is that - if you can get a wired connection to your laptop definitely get that wired
connection to your laptop. I'm assuming that you have internet coming to your house so
the cable comes to your house and then you're distributing the internet from there.
Don't go wireless, if you can get a wired connector to your
laptop. If you cannot get a wired connection to your laptop then do the following test.
So you lose the bare minimum test which is there on this page, but in addition to that get onto a zoom meeting.
An hour-long zoom meeting where you have just two people in there. Because when you
have two people in a zoom meeting and then your video is being shared you're using about one
megabit of uplink which is kind of what we need over here. It says 1.5, I think one
should do. And if you can sustain that meeting for that hour-long, congratulations
your internet connection can take it. So that's kind of my first litmus test over there,
if you have to work on the wireless status. The second litmus test is to
make sure that your router and your laptop use a wireless standard called 802.11.AC.
So it's the AC standard. What happens with the AC standard or AX which is wi-fi 6.
The reason why I recommend these two standards is that they maintain two
active connections with your router. Much more stable in my opinion overall. if your
laptop which is a couple of years old i think most likely it's going to be
the AC standard if your router is a year older so it should be the AC standard if it's
you know a reasonably good router. Again I'm very picky about routers.
So that's the second piece make sure you you have an AC standard or a wi-fi six. Wi-fi six is
very new and very few of you would have it. But AC - is it's been there for about three years now.
The third thing to ensure is that there's a line of sight between
the router and your computer. Wireless as a channel is a very
noisy channel and you know it may work fine for an hour but something might happen and then
and you know the channel might get disrupted for about five seconds and then the connection
might reconnect again. So you might not see your laptop disconnecting from your router
but it happens all the time if there is no line of sight. Especially
when the test is about 3- 3.5 hours long and you don't want that
connection to be disrupted so if you have line of sight the likelihood of that connection going down
because of the wireless pieces is gonna reduce tremendously because you won't have
any obstruction between the router and your computer.
The last piece if you've got to use wireless is make sure you reboot your router
a day or so before the test. Wireless is fickle not just in regards to the medium,
which is wireless transmissions. Your routers have these things called amplifiers that
actually, amplify the wireless signal and the routers are like mini-computers so they
also, have cache and ram over there and you want to make sure when you restart your computer
every day you don't need to restart your router because it doesn't run that many processors. But
as you go in with it websites that cache and that ram start to get filled up.
And if you restart your router a day before that you know that you'll have enough
headroom in your ram that your router has. It's just good practice.
We host you know four or five webinars every week and I make it a practice
to restart my router every weekend. I have a very expensive router. I said I'm a wireless guy
I am always tinkering with technology but even then i restart my router every week. So you know just
a day before the exam make sure you restart your router and that should ensure that
you're good to go with regards to the test. You have you know a very low likelihood that
the wireless connection by itself would disrupt it. One last piece when you are taking the test
ask your friends your roommates your family members to not use the internet.
Why? because you don't want to overload that router. So these are some best practices
that we recommend to people within e-GMAT when they take
the test is what we recommend to people within e-GMA when they conduct a session.
So follow these best practices and your likelihood of getting a really
good experience when you're taking the online GMAT goes up.
By the way when you think about taking the in-center test,
in my opinion they have internet connections right to the computer. So
that's kind of how they get around that wireless problem. That's the network stability that
you get. But if you follow these best practices based on the stats that I have seen
from students, there's a very high likelihood that that you won't face any network issues
while taking the test, even when on wi-fi. Okay so hopefully this helped. Let me know if you have any
questions. I'll be happy to help in whatever capacity I can. Thank you and happy learning