She Took The At-Home GMAT. Here's What Happened

A FIVE-MINUTE BREAK IN HER KITCHEN FOR A GLASS OF LEMONADE

That wasn’t much of a departure for her, anyway. In a test center, she would typically “bail” or guess on a couple of quant questions as well. “That is always a judgment call. You don’t do every question. Part of this is going to be what is my new normal in terms of how to make decisions on what to do and what I will bail on and how to do it.”

She zoomed through the next verbal reasoning section, getting through all 36 questions and finishing that portion of the 65-minute test with more than five minutes to spare. At that point, test takers can opt for an optional five-minute break when they can evade the webcam and leave the computer.

Koprince used the chat button on the screen to inform the proctor that she wanted the break. It took all of ten seconds before a different proctor, this time a male, came on and allowed her to get up and go. She sauntered into her kitchen for a glass of lemonade.

‘YOUR BRAIN IS 100% FOCUSED ON THE TEST SO WHERE YOU TAKE IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER’

“I remember clearly thinking that a bunch of people were commenting on the at-home test days before about how it was going to be so much easier taking it at home,” she says. “It is no easier taking it at home than at a test center. It was just like being in a test center. I think it is just the test. It is a nerve-racking experience to take these exams and your brain is 100% focused on it. You are just focused on the screen and you could have been anywhere.”

She then returned to her office to complete the last section of the test on integrated reasoning, a dozen questions over the next 30 minutes. It went by quickly, and she was done.

A sense of relief flowed over her. “I felt pretty good, actually,” she says. “I was relieved that the exam was not a disaster because I had worried it would be. I also felt relief because we have so many students who are super stressed out about this right now and I think they can be reassured that if they practice with the tool, it will be fine. Most people will need a couple of weeks to practice with it. Some might be able to do it faster. But at a bare minimum, you should practice for about a week.”

‘MY BRAIN IS TIRED, BUT I AM FEELING PRETTY GOOD’

And there was one other notable difference: the fact that GMAC says you have to wait up to seven business days to get your score. At the end of the exam, says Koprince, she was surprised that a statement popped up on the screen indicating that she would get her score in two weeks, not up to seven business days.

“We are so used to instant gratification. Now that we are used to getting them right away, I am not thrilled that I have to wait a week or more to get the score. Now it’s just the waiting game. My brain is tired, but I am feeling pretty good.”

Koprince thinks there’s a decent chance that she still scored in the 99th percentile overall, with her verbal score in her usual range. She thinks she might have lost a point or two on the integrated reasoning section because she didn’t understand one problem and believes she “messed up” on another. And Koprice is also a little unsure about her quant score which tends to be her weak point.

The inevitable question is which test does she prefer: taking the at-home version or going to a test center to sit for the exam. “Right now, I don’t feel fully comfortable using that whiteboard tool to take it. With practice, I think it can be just as comfortable as using scratch paper at a test center. The technical issues are not insurmountable. I just have to practice enough to get it to be comfortable. So that would be the point of taking it at home. But there is still the case that someone is recording me while I am in my own home and that feels weird. It just might be enough to make me go to the test center instead.”