This disclosure provides systems, methods, and devices for wireless communication that support reduced bandwidth devices and particularly, allocation of more than three orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols in the time domain to a control resource set (CORESET). In a first aspect, a method for wireless communication includes receiving, from a base station at a user equipment (UE), a first message that indicates a CORESET configuration. The CORESET configuration allocates more than three OFDM symbols in the time domain to a CORESET. The method further includes monitoring a set of time and frequency resources to receive a second message from the base station at the UE. The set of time and frequency resources have the CORESET configuration. Other aspects and features are also claimed and described.