Remote Proctored GAMSAT Experience

I believe after the recent online sitting of the GAMSAT it will be beneficial to some to describe the experience of sitting a remote proctored exam set by ACER and run by ProctorU. Perhaps in the future ACER might organize a similar exam and those students can refer back to this page so they so do not enter it completely blind as our cohort did.

Here is the booklet for May 2020 GAMSAT if you want to read the exact details. In short, the sections where split up into two. Section 1 (which was shortened to 40 question in 60 minutes, no reading time) and 2 (which remained the same except the reading time is integrating into writing time. so 65 minutes to write), and section 3 is 120 minutes with 60 question (which you do on a separate day). In our case we were able to choose whether we wanted to complete the sections a day apart or a week apart. 

ACER's booklet for the upcoming GAMSAT can be found on the official website.

Some other technical stuff, ProctorU was the service that monitored us while we sat the exam in an ACER application. There were strict rules about the required hardware and what was on your desk and in your room (depending on your technicians, some didn't follow all the protocols).

ACER seemed to have implemented a question bank so there are different questions every day, the difficulty of the questions appeared to have been more difficult but there are many factors that could cause it to seem harder. Most of the section 1 questions came from big extracts that had about 5 questions tied to it, they were also varied. Since there were fewer questions it was obvious every question was of a different variety (i.e narrative, poem, theory, cartoon, figures etc.). In a normal GAMSAT you would expect multiple questions of each variety and I believe this was still present in the online format. Timing wise, on average, a person sitting the normal test would finish with 5 minutes left on section 1. Online, I found timing to be a lot closer than I am comfortable with (I went down to the last minute trying not to guess blindly). It is 1.5 minutes a question and I remember have 10 questions left with 15 to go and I had to consciously read the last few questions faster.

Section 2 was the same not much to expand on here. I am a much faster typer than I am at writing so I found timing to be more comfortable. Just be careful of typos they are very easy to do and hard to spot especially if you have a small monitor. There is no copy and paste, I tried copy and pasting a word into a different spot and it didn't work. Copy and pasting does work outside the ACER test application so it is not apart of ProctorU's script.

I found section 3 less difficult, perhaps this was due to scheduling section 3 one week after section 1 and 2. There was no fatigue associated, like there would be normally, and I was able to revise between the two sittings. Again similar to section 1, there was fewer questions but the variety was still present and each theory had at least 4 questions attached to it.

In terms of being watched while doing the test, it didn't bother me. I can see how it bothers some people to be watched through their web cam by a stranger but the technicians are very quiet and respectful. It would be nice to also see the proctors face so its not just one way, that might calm a few peoples nerves but depending on your technician you might get to hear their voice.

Within my cohort, i'd predict max 30% of students had issues. Some students got unlucky with their technicians that accidentally closed their test and were unable to answer questions for some time, eventually losing time on the exam since the timer continuous to count down as soon as you start. Other issues include the script that ProctorU runs (find out more about how ProctorU operates) deletes shortcuts, temporary files and disables some keyboard commands (and unfortunately some of these don't get reverted automatically). I'd say most of the time everything ran smoothly with and you may experience a few minor hiccups. In the case a major accident occurs and it will affect your score, lets use the example of a technician closing your test and you lose 20 minutes, ACER responds extremely well. This is what occurs in cases like this:

1. Contact ACER immediately, during my testing period they were replying almost 24/7
2. ACER will conduct an investigation, to check if you're lying of course
3. If successful they will offer you to reschedule and re-open the test for the time you have lost (how good!)
4. They can only reschedule during the exam period so if you scheduled your test on the last day and they don't reply in time, i'm afraid you wont be able to re-sit.

Now (obviously), check with ACER for your test but this is what happened to us. I'd say most major problem, at least the ones I heard we're fixed. Other than that everything else behaved like a real exam in the parody of the online format.