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.. :)

NEET PG

Everything was going digital.. And so has exams.. 2011 was the last year for AIPPGME.. Now it is being conducted by a different body, NBE. The exam now is called NEET-PG.. Even AIPMT has become NEET-UG.. And there's a NEET-SS for super specialization.

Prometrics is conducting the online adventure. The same company that takes another National exam -- CAT -- for business students (MBA).

After a lot of struggle, this dream of online exam for MBBS students has been realized.. As far as I remember, I had been hearing rumors of online exam since 2009.. But every time it was cancelled. 2012 was the year..

It was my first online exam experience. Of course, apart from DNB-CET.. This is a post related to my experience.

DNB-CET and NEET-PG were conducted by the same board, i.e. NBE. NBE used to conduct just DNB-CET before this. Now they are conducting both.. And what a mess they have made for both.. There were so many rumors about the expected pattern. But looks like things went totally unexpected. Let me tell  you in brief..

AIPGMEE used to be conducted by AIIMS. It had a question pattern very close to AIIMS, but simpler.. It consisted of questions that were fact based and some that were analysis based. But as the years passed by, the questions became weirder and weirder..  DNB-CET is known for its weird questions.. No logic.. One liner questions.. No analysis.. Not much. The dictum is solve the last few years questions and you can crack the exam easily.. But with AIPGMEE and AIIMS a bit more preparation is needed than just blindly solving last few years questions..

When the new pattern was published for NEET, everybody got quite scared.. The proposed pattern included questions with graphs, X-Rays, Diagrams and a lot of analysis questions..

And then something funny happened.. After all the apprehension and hard work behind the said pattern, we encountered a pattern that was like DNB-CET, i.e. one liner questions without any analysis.. And the questions were either kid easy or senseless tough.. And since it was taken over a week for around 7days, question sets differed.. Some students got more of kid easy and some got more of senseless tough…

It was my first online exam experience… and it was satisfactory.. I shall write about my experience on a different post…

See ya all.. :)