Online Exam Experience

In this post I shall talk about my experience of the online exam. :)

I was in Bangalore when the "forms" were being distributed. They were being distributed as usual in a bank.. We were made to stand in a queue. And it was almost a 200m long queue, OUTSIDE THE BANK!!! :o seriously!! It seemed as if everybody in Bangalore were there to buy the "application form".. Anyhow, after almost 2 hours I got to enter the bank and buy the "form", which turned out to be a "SCRATCH-CARD"!!

After getting the scratch-card, we rushed to the nearest cyber café to fill the form.. The plan was to get a seat in Bangalore.. But alas!! No seats! We started at around 2 p.m. and at around about 10 p.m. we successfully filled the form and registered ourselves.. Pathetic server speed.. Actually the fight for centre made the students rush on the first day itself; and the severs crashed.. But I'd say they were quite stable..

Thankfully I got a centre at my hometown, Jamshedpur..  :D and I was happy to have a centre where my home was. But the happiness was short-lived.. I went to see the centre before the day of exam and I was surprised!! There it was.. Amidst mud houses.. A college, that had around 60-70 computers in its computer lab.. And to reach this college you were needed to travel around 3 kilometers on the highway outside Jamshedpur and then  for the next 3 kilometers take a 3m broad road!!! What a discovery!! I donno how they found that place in the whole of Jamshedpur…!! :-\

Anyways we entered the centre and got ourselves checked.. And they took everything we had in our possessions, except our clothes I think.. The best part was that they were taking our handkerchiefs saying they were "strictly instructed" to do so, BUT let us take our purse!! Some logic!!Next we were registered.. Fingerprint scanners and what not.. Anyhow.. We sat in our respective seats.. And the exams started..

Then something happened.. The bright screen was giving me a headache.. And the monitor in front of me was new to me and I didn't have the nerve to experiment. So I asked the invigilator to decrease the brightness of the screen.. After 5 minutes or so, this guy comes.. I ask him to decrease the brightness.. He stretches his hand for the monitor console and lo! Switches off the monitor!! :o Then he switches it on.. Then makes the screen go long broad trapezoid and what not! And in the end he successfully decreases the brightness!! What a fight! Lol! :D I had an "in-exam entertainment".. :D

All-in-all it was a good experience.. Errors like marking the wrong answers on the OMR sheet has been totally removed.. You can change your answer any number of times.. Apart from that there was an option for marking the question.. On the review page, you could selectively review the "Incomplete" questions, the "Marked" questions or all in sequence.. At the end of the exam, Prometric had given a feedback form to fill.. Next we were allowed to leave.. We were given our possessions back.. :)