UTME Experience: Time Waits For No One

Leaving my abode at about 6:10 am hoping to get to Huntsville Technology Limited before 7 am my heart paced as I was earnestly praying for a road free of congestion. The proverb "time waits for no one" continuously resonated in my mind, to make matters worse we missed our route making us expend additional time getting there. On getting to the exam center at 7:20 am, I was glad to see that students were still in the process of entering, so I joined the queue. We were asked to submit our bags and other materials except for our slip and pencil. We were asked to put on our nose mask in compliance with the COVID-19 protocols though we weren't given sanitizers nor was social distancing observed. There was a quick security check by the security officers present after which was the biometric data verification. The biometric verification wasted a lot of time as the fingerprint sensor (just one) didn't detect prints fast enough. After the verification process, we immediately located our seats. The examination room was well ventilated with "Air Conditioners" AC and Closed Circuit Television "CCTV cameras" at every corner. The room had about seven invigilators; while some directed us to our seats, some had to do with the technical part and there was, the "head invigilator" as she was seen directing other invigilators. When we were all fully settled the invigilators asked us to press the start button as indicated on the screen, immediately after this we saw a pane warning about "examination malpractice" and a button that asked us to proceed to the examination. While I started by inputting my examination number and the login process was done, I moved on to a page showing my name, reg number, and passport photograph amongst others like the instructions of the examination which is the replica of 2020's. Meanwhile, few students had technical issues and didn't even get beyond the initial start button. While the hitch in some systems was cleared by simply rebooting it which gave me the opportunity of seeing that the real name of the app is "auto-bot jamb browser" and not RAPID Test as often displayed. Other faulty systems had to be changed, this technical difficulty lasted over 45mins which made some students just start while others were already about 1 hour into their examination. Apart from that, no other technical issue was recorded as the CBT interface went all well. We were allowed to take only a pencil and there was no provision for rough sheets which made many candidates use their examination slips as an alternative. We were asked a total of 180 questions in English-60, and 40 each for the other three subjects, depending on your combo. Selection of answers was also easy as we were provided with both a mouse and a keyboard. I noticed an interesting feature of the on-screen calculator as it accepted keyboard commands which were previously unknown to me and not written in the instructions part of the examination. I experimented with this cool feature as it helped in saving time expended in using the mouse for calculation. The number keys were the same, full stop(.) for decimal points, an asterisk(*) for multiplication, slash (/) for division, plus (+), subtraction (-), and equal to(=) signs worked as normal. It is almost similar to a normal computer calculator just that this one is restricted as it performs just basic operations. Also, there was something quite questionable and that was when the head invigilator suddenly said "30 minutes more" this got me and also other students nervous as the exam itself is timed. She kept the count down rolling until she finally said "1 minute more" after which she went into the server room and automatically submitted and ended everyone's exam. Luckily for me, I was done though I had about 12 mins left. My deepest concern was to those who had technical problems as they were yet to complete plenty of questions and also had an outstanding time of over 45mins. This scenario kept me wondering as to why she did that, "could it be that they were trying to conserve resources",

For me, the exam was a success.