EE w/Power Depth

[chicago]

Ok, so like the rest of the Oct. '07 PE (Electrical) Test takers, we are gonna spend the next few months (mind you, the rest of the summer) studying.

I have some good questions that hopefully someone can answer:

1. Has anyone found any good PE EE sample exams on the web? There's gotta be some posted somewhere. Or for that matter, commonly used theory notes for the EE test.

2. What is the difference between the NEC Handbook vs. the NEC Code Book? Which is more useful and why? For example, did you use it to reference some Power Afternoon questions?

3. Did anyone find using the IEEE (red, blue, green, etc) book helpful as useful references?

4. Does anyone know what the major differences are in EERM's 6th edition vs. 7th edition? Is it worth to get the 7th version?

5. In Illinois, are we allowed to bring the Schaum's Power Systems Book to the exam?

6. Have you noticed any tricks/trends/patterns in making eliminations of choices right off the bat? For example, answer choices that are not similar in format with the rest of the choices.

7. Do you remember some odd/unheard-of/uncommon PE afternoon topics that they threw at you and you couldn't find anywhere in your reference books you brought with you? For example, FOA transformers?

Ok that's all I can think of for now. Good luck for those who haven't received their April '07 scores. I have a couple of colleagues who are going through the same mental torture of waiting.

 

[Dark Knight]

Ok, so like the rest of the Oct. '07 PE (Electrical) Test takers, we are gonna spend the next few months (mind you, the rest of the summer) studying.
I have some good questions that hopefully someone can answer:

1. Has anyone found any good PE EE sample exams on the web? There's gotta be some posted somewhere. Or for that matter, commonly used theory notes for the EE test.

2. What is the difference between the NEC Handbook vs. the NEC Code Book? Which is more useful and why? For example, did you use it to reference some Power Afternoon questions?

3. Did anyone find using the IEEE (red, blue, green, etc) book helpful as useful references?

4. Does anyone know what the major differences are in EERM's 6th edition vs. 7th edition? Is it worth to get the 7th version?

5. In Illinois, are we allowed to bring the Schaum's Power Systems Book to the exam?

6. Have you noticed any tricks/trends/patterns in making eliminations of choices right off the bat? For example, answer choices that are not similar in format with the rest of the choices.

7. Do you remember some odd/unheard-of/uncommon PE afternoon topics that they threw at you and you couldn't find anywhere in your reference books you brought with you? For example, FOA transformers?

Ok that's all I can think of for now. Good luck for those who haven't received their April '07 scores. I have a couple of colleagues who are going through the same mental torture of waiting.

1. Other than the NCEES sample test which I advice you to work, Kaplan's sample test is really good. Will not going into the details but I think is a must. It helped me a lot.

2. If you are not famililar with NEC myabe the Handbook will be useful. I used to work with the NEC so, not bragging here, even in my failing attemps always did good. I read somewhere here that the Handbook is fine. It has a lot of examples but if you ask me, there is a thread here that has a lot of NEC problems that are PE style. If you are not able to find it PM me.

3. I don't have an opinion on that. Have to be careful with the references you use. I have used IEEE papers in my job and they are not user friendly. In my opinion, these are not the type of documents I will take to the PE test. Of course, if you are familiar with them, thats another story.

4. Call "the other board", by the way :"the other board": , they might be able to tell you if it is worthy or not. When I was studying for my third try they released a new Sample test. I called them and a nice lady told me that buying the new edition was not worthy. They just fixed some mistakes and that was it.

5. I don't have a clue. If I were you I will check your State Board rules. If you can't find a response there then call them.

6. The test it is not design to trick anyone. You should be able to eliminate two answers right away. Then it is up to you to use the right concepts. The test methodology is one of the top secrets in the world. I don't think there is a person, out of the Gods' house(NCEES), able to answer your question properly.

7. Like things you have never heard before? Things that make you say: What the Heck is that? Oh YESSS. You will find some of those in the test. The better you prepare the less of these things you will find but, mark my words: You will find two or three, maybe four. Just don't panic. Plan your work and work your plan.

EB has a great group of EEs here willing to help. Do you need help? I can guarantee someone will help you.

Good Luck in October 07!!!!

 

[Dark Knight]

Here is the link for the NEC problems I mentioned in my post. Hope it helps

http://engineerboards.com/index.php?showtopic=948

 

[Techie_Junkie_PE_LEED_AP]

Ok, so like the rest of the Oct. '07 PE (Electrical) Test takers, we are gonna spend the next few months (mind you, the rest of the summer) studying.
I have some good questions that hopefully someone can answer:

1. Has anyone found any good PE EE sample exams on the web? There's gotta be some posted somewhere. Or for that matter, commonly used theory notes for the EE test.

2. What is the difference between the NEC Handbook vs. the NEC Code Book? Which is more useful and why? For example, did you use it to reference some Power Afternoon questions?

3. Did anyone find using the IEEE (red, blue, green, etc) book helpful as useful references?

4. Does anyone know what the major differences are in EERM's 6th edition vs. 7th edition? Is it worth to get the 7th version?

5. In Illinois, are we allowed to bring the Schaum's Power Systems Book to the exam?

6. Have you noticed any tricks/trends/patterns in making eliminations of choices right off the bat? For example, answer choices that are not similar in format with the rest of the choices.

7. Do you remember some odd/unheard-of/uncommon PE afternoon topics that they threw at you and you couldn't find anywhere in your reference books you brought with you? For example, FOA transformers?

Ok that's all I can think of for now. Good luck for those who haven't received their April '07 scores. I have a couple of colleagues who are going through the same mental torture of waiting.

1. I agree, NCEES is the BEST, most accurate and similar sample you'll find. The course from MGI has good sample exams for AM and PM Power, Electronics and Computer. Also, check out the Sample exam by Dr. Kenneth Kaiser, you'll find posts here somewhere.

2. The NEC Handbook (yellow hardcover) is a full Code book that is more user friendly, colored text and pictures, diagrams. In my opinion, better.

3. I don't know.

4. I'm not sure, but either is good.

5. ?

6. I haven't.

7. No.

Good luck.

 

[benbo]

i won't answer all your questions in detail, since I am not really a power guy. You are right to look for sampel tests, that is the best way to study. Problem is, there aren't a lot of them. The best is of course the NCEES sample questions and answers. After that, the "the other board" has an exam, there is that Kaiser exam, and the Kaplan exam is good although it is a little harder than the normal PE, has too many significant figures and has problems that build on each other. But it is good for getting an idea of subjects. There are also some old PE exam study materials. Look on Amazon or Ebay.

There is also an old study workbook for power that was written by an Indian professor. Another fellow on here, superme, talks about a book called Chelapati. That may be the one I am thinking about - it is a large blue softcover book. Problem hereis that nobody can find the book, but I did have a book that looked like that. I gave it away becuase I hate Power (I am an ECC guy). Now this perosn superme says that there is nothing to study and you don't really need to study much - that part I would ignore. Maybe that's true for him, but not for most people here. Most people find having some references helpful.

There are always weird questions in the afternoon. You can't prepare for all of them, and people can't really tell you much about them because they can't reveal what was on their exam. If you master the basics and nail the mnorning session then you can bring a few referecnes and hope these contain helpful info.

Good luck.

 

[mudpuppy]

I'll skip the ones I don't have answers to:

2. I do not use the code at work and am not very familiar with it. I found the code quesitons on the exam were not very hard; it was just a matter of finding the proper section of the code to answer the question. Due to the way the code is (dis)organized, this can be way more difficult than it sounds. The Handbook's commentary sometimes refers you to other appropriate sections, and I found this to be a huge time saver on the exam. Definitely worth it in my opinion, unless you are already very familiar with the code. Of course, it's pretty expensive, so I borrowed a copy--if there hadn't been one available, I would have tried to convice my employer to buy one for the department.

4. I don't know what the differences are, but I used the 6th ed. this past April and I passed.

5. I don't know about IL, but in MI, they let you use any bound material you want. Best to call or email your state board and ask.

6. No, not really. In some cases it is obvious that one answer is different than the others; for instance maybe one answer is negative and three of them are positive numbers. But I wouldn't try to come to any conclusions based on this. Best to work the problem and see if your result matches. If you can't come up with an answer, you may be able to make an educated guess to eliminate a couple choices, but that's about it.

7. Yes. There were a few problems I was shocked to see on the exam because I had not seen any of these types of problems in any of the study materials I used. However, I did check the outline of exam topics on NCEES' website after the exam, and they were all in there. These questions are really the killers in the depth module, and where the Practice part of "Principles and Practice Exam" comes in. Fortuantely, in my case I was familiar with these topices because I have a broad background in power through undergrad and graduate school and my job. I felt these questions were not very difficult--really almost gimmees, but only if you already have some familiarity with the subject because they were designed in a way to be difficult to just look up in a reference.

7. cont. I really recommend looking at the NCEES topic list. Obviously the heavy hitters like machines and three-phase circuit analysis will definitely be on the exam. As for the more specialized areas, go through the list and do an assessment of your skills in each one. This will give you a study guide. But, don't spend too much time studiying one of these topics, because that is less time you will have to study the heavy-hitters. I have zero knowledge of Illumination Design, Power Electronics and Variable Frequency Drives. I did not even try to study these topics. I took a power electronics reference into the exam and I think it helped get one question right (I saved the questions on these topics for last). But I still bombed Illumination and VFD's. But I passed. What I'm getting at here is if you spend all your time studying for these exotic questions you may well fail the exam because you neglected the heavy-hitters. But I doubt you can pass the exam without knowing at least some of the specialized topics. So, my advice is to focus on the heavy-hitting topics (including the AM session), and spend some time reviewing the specialized stuff that you already have some familiarity with. Of course, this is my opinion and others here may disagree. Comments anyone?

As for FOA transformers, are you referring to forced-oil-air?

 

[grover]

The NEC Handbook is the NEC codebook, but with additional commentary annotated throughout. If you have a choice, pick the handbook. But the codebook will do fine, too.

The NCEES practice exam was pretty NEC-heavy, but it will vary from test-to-test. Oh, and the practice exam references NEC 2002, while the exam uses 2005; the one practice question refers to a table that no longer exists, so don't let it throw you too badly! I passed the exam with the basic codebook, btw. And I'm pretty sure I got both NEC questions right.

 

[Wolverine]

There's one more resource that shouldn't be forgotten and that's your colleagues & peers. When I started my attack on NCEES, I chatted it up around the office and found that one guy knew a guy who maybe had an NEC Codebook. Turns out this guy also had a slew of other books on interpreting code which he loaned me and BINGO, I went from zero to hero on NEC, and felt like I did well on that portion even though I had little experience with it. Then another guy had a book of notes he had assembled from years ago which he loaned me and there were some good, challenging, unique problems there. Engineers can be packrats (at least many are) and hopefully you'll find some extra secret stashes of notes out there. So go look for that help locally as well as EB.

On #6, Ways to Narrow Down the Answers, always go first for units and decimals. On one sample problem, I remember seeing all the same numerical answer, with only the units different, so the math didn't matter, just units. You can't expect a softball like that on the real exam but you can look and quickly see that a secondary CT current of 5000 amps is something to be skeptical about, just as is a primary power line current of 0.5 amps. They'll usually use more realistic real world values and rarely did I see many clear, simple eliminations. That should always be your third line of defense, as previously stated, after first trying to work the problem and then error-checking your work.

 

[pete25]

Did you get an answer from Illinois about allowing Schaumm material on the Electrical PE exam?

Just curious

 

[Techie_Junkie_PE_LEED_AP]

Actually, odd problems not in EERM would be lighting questions. Without getting into specifics, its no secret EERM skips this obscure topic. After the exam, I went to a University libarary and found two excellent lighting books; 1) Public Lighting from the 1960-1970's and 2) IESNA handbook (Illumination Engineering Society of North America) from the 1980's.

These two books have way more than you'll care to know about illumination of parking lots, stadiums, highways and prisons.

These are thorough and great references.

 

[Flyer_PE]

I'll only answer the questions that I think I can contribute something on. I took the April '07 test and passed.

2. As was stated previously, the handbook contains the same information as the code book with additional commentary. My own personal experience with the exam is that the additional commentary actually proved useful for one of the NEC questions. The answer was in the code itself but it looked like the whoever generated the test question was either reading that section of the handbook or wrote that section of the handbook. My reason for choosing the handbook going in is that I don't have a whole lot of experience using the code.

3. Being familiar with the color books, I doubt you will find them much use in the exam. As Luis said, they are not very user friendly and not designed for speedy information retrieval.

4. I used the 6th edition with no problems. Make sure to go through the errata posted on their web site for whichever edition you have plus any subsequent editions/printings. More than likely that error correction is all that has been done.

5. The only rule I'm aware of in IL for reference material is that you can't take a compilation of solved problems into the exam. The EERM is ok but the sample problems and solutions is not. I'm not familiar enough with the Schaum's outline to know for sure if it is allowed. One strange thing about IL is that they will not allow you to take the FE Reference Handbook into the exam. If there's stuff in there you want with you, take it in with you in another form. I took the Electrical Quick Reference Guide but used it very little.

6. My only advice is to take a look at the available answers before you work the problem. I had a problem that I spent way too much time finding the exact answer only to find that I could have deduced the answer in about 3 minutes had I looked at the bottom of the page.

7. As has been said in other places on this board, the EERM is pretty good for the AM session but not so great for the PM. There are no subjects on the test that you aren't listed. The EERM does not have a section on lighting. It's like everything else, you don't have to be a lighting wizard but having some basic knowledge and the equations handy would be helpful.

Good luck on the exam. I'm planning to stick around and be of any help that I can.

Jim

 

[Dark Knight]

Great post Jim.

One more thing that I will add to all the things that have been posted here is this.

[SIZE=24pt]READ THE WHOLE PROBLEM FIRST!!!!!![/SIZE]

As simple as this seems to be you would be surprised how many times you will be tempted to crunch numbers in the calculator right away and move to the next problem as soon as possible. Big NO NO.

This is not Daytona 500 and there is no reason to be in a hurry. Take your time and be cool. Understand what is being asked on the problem. This is very important.

 

[Flyer_PE]

This is not Daytona 500 and there is no reason to be in a hurry. Take you time and be cool. Understand what is being asked on the problem. This is very important.

It sure as hell felt like the 500 for a little bit there. I think fighter pilots call it target fixation. I focused in on solving that damn problem and the next thing I knew, I had answered exactly the first two problems in the afternoon session with 30 minutes elapsed. My first thought was "I'm screwed". My second was that I still had 3hrs and 30 minutes to make up for lost ground. I actually managed to finish the test and re-check my work with about 45 minutes to spare.

I'm just lucky that stress tends to cause me to focus on the objective rather than panic. I would still rather I hadn't dug that hole for myself.

Jim

 

[grover]

It sure as hell felt like the 500 for a little bit there. I think fighter pilots call it target fixation. I focused in on solving that damn problem and the next thing I knew, I had answered exactly the first two problems in the afternoon session with 30 minutes elapsed. My first thought was "I'm screwed". My second was that I still had 3hrs and 30 minutes to make up for lost ground. I actually managed to finish the test and re-check my work with about 45 minutes to spare.
I'm just lucky that stress tends to cause me to focus on the objective rather than panic. I would still rather I hadn't dug that hole for myself.

Jim

I had a similar experience, but not with time, just with PM frustration as I hit problem after problem that I was absolutely clueless on or felt like I was making simply a best guess. Due largely to the sheer # of problems I simply flagged and skipped, I finished the PM section in an hour, but was seriously stressing. Over the course of the afternoon, though, and double-checking my work, I realized that I was NOT making best guesses, and that it was just happenstance the first few pages of the test were material I didn't know and all that had happened was my confidence was shot. My confidence level built and I figure at the end I got 30 of the 40 right.
I've never had a problem with speed on the FE or PE, and always finished with hours to spare. Had enough time to waste a full hour on one problem, too, lol...