October 2019 Post Exam Wait Period - Welcome to the Suck

[Dead Load]

Why he got fired for not signing that?? What's that non-compete?

A non-compete says that you can't work in competition with your employer if you leave.  I had a two-year non-compete for light-gage engineering with my first job.

And they are usually written to be way more restrictive than is actually legally enforceable depending on the state you are in. 

 

[NoVanon PE]

I work in NoVA, time to tear this bih up.

Hello fellow NoVa person!

 

[HopkinsReb P.E.]

Hello fellow NoVa person!

I live in Alexandria, work in downtown Dc.  'Sup?

 

[numbr44coldcuts]

people are like OMG you haven't gotten test results and I'm like OMG do you want to die 

 

[Tiger15]

Reposting this to provide everyone a little perspective, but also because I'm hoping that it helps @Cocoa1210 peacefully deal with the reality of the situation...

Does it take long to grade a scantron? No. But there are a lot of other things that go into grading the test that need to be considered. So let's take a quick look at those things, using round numbers.

Day 0 - Test

Shipping the test sheets from the 100+ test sites to NCEES in South Carolina. -  5 days, which includes weekends and "ground" shipping from remote locations like Guam, CNMI, Hawai'i and international locations.

Actually running the 20,000-30,000 scantron pages that arrive - 3 days

Manual double check of the scantron grading of the tests. Lets say that they manually check 5% of the scantrons vs the total. This is still a 1000 pages - 5 days

Statistical analysis of the results to identify anomalies; collecting reports of weird questions from around the country, investigating incidents of potential cheating, etc. - 14 days, including weekends.

Assembling test exam committees to review anomalous questions and other statistical quirks, determination of cut score for newer tests based on analysis, and disposition of various items listed in the previous entry. - Probably overlaps with the above to a certain extent, but the smaller exams always schedule their exam meetings late in the grading cycle, so excluding overlap, lets give it 5 days, but more is possible with a new and smaller exam

Miscellaneous administrative work, including uploading results, QA, management approvals, and communicating results to the Boards - 3 days

Add it up and you get about 35 days, which is consistent with the April release times. Add a few more days for the November holidays and you get something closer to the 40ish days we tend to see for the October results.

You can argue with my assumptions for durations, but the turnaround time of slightly over a month passes the sniff test.

*Someone else posted a similar analysis a few years ago but I can't find it. Hence I'm recreating it here. If someone has the link, please post it.

 

[Cocoa1210]

There's so much more to scoring to grading a scantron though. Seriously, read up on how the exam is scored and I think it will help you get a better understanding of why this process takes awhile.  I mean, we have people on here talking about visiting the NCEES headquarters - do you honestly think they're doing this on purpose? Why would they put themselves through that?

And I recently sent a report two weeks late to a client because the technical person on my team responsible for reviewing the report was wrapped up on a proposal and was completely ghosting me (not answering my calls, emails, or anything -and he sits 1600 miles away from me, so couldn't just pop into his office to see what was up.) Shit happens.

OMG they have to schedule a meeting with people all over the country. It’s called, webex or GoToMeeting. Even if they really have to meet in person, it’s better to know exactly when it’s coming that cutting everybody’s productivity. I’m sure most of these people here have better things to do. 
 

I don’t know what kinds of projects you guys work on but when your project is for a specific event like olympics or a national game, you better have a good explanation why you’re costing the client millions of dollars by delaying the project other than your person is ghosting you.

 

[Tiger15]

OMG they have to schedule a meeting with people all over the country. It’s called, webex or GoToMeeting. Even if they really have to meet in person, it’s better to know exactly when it’s coming that cutting everybody’s productivity. I’m sure most of these people here have better things to do. 
 

I don’t know what kinds of projects you guys work on but when your project is for a specific event like olympics or a national game, you better have a good explanation why you’re costing the client millions of dollars by delaying the project other than your person is ghosting you.

I just reposted a good explanation above for you.

 

[Whovian]

Long time stalker first time writer. I think I failed. It’s letting me go through the moves to register again

 

[txjennah PE]

OMG they have to schedule a meeting with people all over the country. It’s called, webex or GoToMeeting. Even if they really have to meet in person, it’s better to know exactly when it’s coming that cutting everybody’s productivity. I’m sure most of these people here have better things to do. 
 

I don’t know what kinds of projects you guys work on but when your project is for a specific event like olympics or a national game, you better have a good explanation why you’re costing the client millions of dollars by delaying the project other than your person is ghosting you.

 

[MDeebs PE]

OMG they have to schedule a meeting with people all over the country. It’s called, webex or GoToMeeting. Even if they really have to meet in person, it’s better to know exactly when it’s coming that cutting everybody’s productivity. I’m sure most of these people here have better things to do. 
 

I don’t know what kinds of projects you guys work on but when your project is for a specific event like olympics or a national game, you better have a good explanation why you’re costing the client millions of dollars by delaying the project other than your person is ghosting you.

That's exactly why it takes so long to schedule the meeting. People have better things to do than take 4-5 days out of their lives to meet in SC and set a cut score. It's tough to put together enough volunteers to get a valid exam cut score. Sure they can produce an exam score with 3 engineers that had the same weekend availability, but how reliable would that cut score be?

 

[txjennah PE]

OMG they have to schedule a meeting with people all over the country. It’s called, webex or GoToMeeting. Even if they really have to meet in person, it’s better to know exactly when it’s coming that cutting everybody’s productivity. I’m sure most of these people here have better things to do. 
 

I don’t know what kinds of projects you guys work on but when your project is for a specific event like olympics or a national game, you better have a good explanation why you’re costing the client millions of dollars by delaying the project other than your person is ghosting you.

Oh man, I don't work on projects for the Olympics! That would be cool! I bet you don't either, based on your lack of understanding of how projects can get delayed.

 

[Leo037]

Curious, what is the amount of time added to CBT exam result release when they also require  cut score meetings?

 

[SB_VA]

And they are usually written to be way more restrictive than is actually legally enforceable depending on the state you are in. 

Very true.  I believe if the Non-Compete limits your ability to work it becomes non-enforceable.  Some states even ban them completely.  

 

[Fisherman504]

World of Warcraft?

I'm gonna need everyone to tone it down a level. We ain't all getting Orange drops are we?

 

[Cocoa1210]

Oh man, I don't work on projects for the Olympics! That would be cool! I bet you don't either, based on your lack of understanding of how projects can get delayed.

Actually, I do. Thank you.

 

[Cocoa1210]

That's exactly why it takes so long to schedule the meeting. People have better things to do than take 4-5 days out of their lives to meet in SC and set a cut score. It's tough to put together enough volunteers to get a valid exam cut score. Sure they can produce an exam score with 3 engineers that had the same weekend availability, but how reliable would that cut score be?

As I said, then tell us it won’t get released until January 6th. And release it then even if the results come back earlier. All I’m saying is that there’s a merit to being transparent. 

 

[RBHeadge PE]

Curious, what is the amount of time added to CBT exam result release when they also require  cut score meetings?

CBT is a different testing medium and has different SOPs.

 

[numbr44coldcuts]

would you take the exam again this friday if NCEES promised results before you left the test site?

 

[MDeebs PE]

As I said, then tell us it won’t get released until January 6th. And release it then even if the results come back earlier. All I’m saying is that there’s a merit to being transparent. 

How much more transparency than "8-10 weeks" do you need? 8-10 weeks, we're not even at 7 full weeks yet. People are acting like NCEES told us results will be out in 4 weeks and we're still waiting.

 

[Sambam]

it's out ......it's out... it's out...