I'm curious what everyone's experience has been in terms of lagging test center computers when taking ARE 5 PPD. I just finished at a Prometric site, and I literally ran out of time staring at a white screen, waiting for a question to pop up. Over the course of the exam I think I spent 10 minutes or more waiting for questions to appear, and my resource materials loaded very very slowly in the case studies. It was really difficult to page through the IBC excerpts, for example. Has this been typical for everyone? If it is, I'm going to need to pace myself differently. I've gone through 4 ARE 4 exams, and time has never been an issue for me.

Generally for 5.0 everyone has had the same problem....it's such a shame...we'll never win on this one.

Thats crazy.

Well, we should be used to this. Its just like ARE 4...studying entails learning about all of the effed-up aspects of the exam. I lost like 10-15 minutes waiting for the computer to respond, didn't get to answer all of the questions, and barely failed, while passing 4/5 content areas.

One more thing for anyone reading this: Maybe it was explained somewhere and I missed it, but when you have to drag elements on to sketches on the screen, you can right-click and rotate the elements. I didn't figure that out until the end of the exam, after being baffled by a few questions where it would have made all the difference.

I live in LA but purposefully drove down to Lake Forest down in OC after hearing about the lag. Apart from the lovely staff who were scheduled at the wrong time the connection worked well, typically timed at 2-3 seconds per standard question load time and 6-7 for image based drag and drop. Believe the Anaheim location also has "descent" connection times.