I got the yellow grid laminated sheets yesterday along with 2 fine tipped pens. At first I was quite happy with them because I was afraid the pens would be the wide tipped ones and I hate those. But these were fine tipped and worked fine. Then into the 3rd testlet, I needed more room. (I do tend to jot a lot of numbers, probably too many.) I tried to erase them with the tissues they gave me at check in and it didn't work. So I motioned to the Prometric lady to bring me another board. She brought me another tissue. I told her that I already had those and they didn't work. She left and in a few minutes another lady brought me a wet tissue. Yeah, what happens to a tissue when it gets wet? It turns into a snot like substance that makes a huge mess! By this time, the laminated sheet was covered in water, the desk was covered in black ink and I was (insert a lot of very foul, offensive dirty words here). So I motioned to her to bring me ANOTHER one. She brought me 2 more dry tissues and 2 more balls of the snot like substance. I understand, and support, their desire to become more environmentally friendly, but I don't support it when it interferes with my concentration and the amount of time I have to take an exam! From the time I first asked for help to the time I was able to fully concentrate on the problem, five minutes had elapsed. This is UNACCEPTABLE! Why can't they just give us an Excel spreadsheet to access during the MCQ's? Wouldn't that be even more environmentally friendly!
I've never left comments at the end of an exam unless they were positive, but yesterday I let it all out! The calculator appears to be coded by a blind monkey! I was curious as to how hard it was to code a calculator with a thousands separator comma. So when I got home I asked my son, who's pretty good with computer code, and he said it's not hard. I'll show you. In 15 minutes he had a fully functioning calculator with COMMA'S on my computer screen! He's 15 years old!!!
The spreadsheet in the simulations is also a freaking joke. Once again, no thousands separator! No auto sum feature. You don't have the ability to copy and paste using CTRL-C and CTRL-V. I do not personally know one accountant who doesn't use Excel! Would it be that difficult to form a joint venture with Microsoft to allow us to use it on the exam? Probably not! I'm sure Microsoft would jump at the chance to provide their product to their TARGET MARKET!
When I finally left, I had something else strange happen. Has anyone ever been told that they have to leave their NTS with the testing center? I've tested more times than I care to count and no one has EVER told me that Prometric kept the NTS, until yesterday. I let them make a copy of it, but I took it with me! But before I go to Prometric's site and seriously bash this new testing center and Prometric's decision to lay off all of the staff at the old one that knew what they were doing, I wanted to find out if anyone else had ever been asked to leave their NTS.
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