CAT server is slow at times

[imtrying]

Hi guys I wonder if anyone taking MG CAT exams has experienced similar slowness in server response.

I took two tests by far. Both of them were taken on Saturdays around noon hours, eastern standard time. Location is a local library with very good WIFI access. In fact I'm always running a ping program at all time to another well known web site to monitor the WIFI connectivity. It has been consistently good.

This is what I experienced. Each time I started the Quant section, i was able to get pages loaded fast, answers confirmed and submitted fast. The further I went into the section, the more sluggishness of the CAT server I started to experience. Eventually it would come down to a halt (all the while the WIFI had been proven up). I would have to repeatedly interrupt the paused loading, refresh the page, and submit again when it finally came through. With this interruption, the whole pacing thing was disrupted. I saw this happening especially during the last half or 1/3 of the quant section for both tests.

Funny thing is, both times when I moved into verbal, things start looked afresh again. It had a smooth flow almost until after I finished the verbal sections.

It's very hard to imagine something was going on in the CAT server that may cause my experience in Quant..

My quant was 51 in both times, but definitely I couldn't finish all the question on time. guess I'll submit a separate questions on the difficulty level of MG quant questions..

Thanks a lot for reading my question. You guys are doing a wonderful job..

[Guest]

I'm working on my third MG CAT now.. As a proof, I can type in the forum, but the test question #10 is not getting back to me... This happens every time so far..

[imtrying]

I refreshed the problem that got stuck on the page and lost the timer for this problem alone. Now I'm done with next question and submission is stuck again...

[imtrying]

Okay. I'm just done with my third CAT test.

I'm on a different WIFI connection and again my ping program has shown a consistently good connectivity to the Internet.

This time, unlike previous two (slow in quant only) the slowness persisted across two sections. So here's what I did:

after every answer that I submitted, if the server pauses for 3 seconds, I will start hitting stop then refresh, and repeat this between 4 to 5 times. I always managed to get a good connection this way after 4- 5 tries and then was able to submit my answer. So basically for each question, I wasted about 10 - 15 seconds.

Good thing is, today I aimed to pace my entire sections into 75m each, and gosh I made a point to do that at the sacrifice of a bit more thinking, relying on instinct/intuition. 750 again.

This score is pretty hard to believe, as I felt really shaky throughout the two sections due to lack of full attention to problems.

Dear helpful MG Staff, would you be able to look at this server problem? It has been at least two weeks since I started from at least for locations.

[StaceyKoprince]

Whenever you have any tech problems, please send an email immediately to techsupport@manhattangmat.com or call 800.576.GMAT. The only guess I have is that the day and time of day you're taking the tests is a very popular time to take the tests and there might be too many people trying to access at once - but I'm not an IT person, so I really don't know what's going on!

I'll also forward this thread to our IT department but, in future, please contact them directly yourself so you don't have to wait as long for help! :)

[StaceyKoprince]

I talked to our IT department. First, this past Saturday, our web hosting service had an outage in the middle of the day, so any slowness then was a result of that. If you notice slowness at other times and you are on a wireless connection, switch to a wired connection if you can. Even though your pings will show that the wireless connection is fine, the test may experience some lag - there's a lot more data with the test than is sent via pings. Our head of IT said that, although many people do just fine using wireless, some don't and those who don't will find a big difference if they connect via wireline instead.

[imtrying]

Thank you very much for following up on this!

I appreciate all your help and service provided by MG..

[StaceyKoprince]

No problem! And, as I mentioned, any time anyone has a technical issue, make sure to contact tech support right away (techsupport@manhattangmat.com and 800.576.GMAT). They'll be happy to help you resolve the issue!