Deception on the danged answer sheet!

Anyone else have this happen:

You?re working through the PE exam and about 3 hours in you look down at all your dots and think, ?man, I have a lot done, I?m doing pretty good.? B) Then you actually count all the dots you have done and find out you only have about 20 or so???? Then you think, ?Man, only half way with only an hour to go, I?m doing pretty bad. Oh no!? Then panic sets in and hopes start diminishing.

This happened to me on both the am and pm sections. I tell you, when those dots are spaced out on the answer sheet, it can be deceiving how many you actually have done!

Ed

I did not fill in the dots until finished answering all the questions. What happened to you Ed happened too many times in grade school. Don't worry, you still passed.

Man, I vaguely remember grade school. But, I'm not really too old (34).

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Can you tell me what theory you are going with that makes you think I passed? :bow: I need to look that one up.

Ed

The fact that you are here and care to post every day is my theory. I would say your passing chances are better than 50/50. :beerchug

Here where I work everyone has to take the PE to get anywhere. After taking the test, the only thing we have all agreed on is that almost nobody here had any certain idea whether they passed it or not. Of the guys who were certain they passed, several didn't. I, on the other hand, was almost certain I would be retaking it. Although I felt fairly confident about getting questions right, when I thought about it I couldn't really be 100% sure about very many of them. But I passed by some miracle - I'm still not sure how. :dunno:

releon,

I thought that just proved that I had OCD or something!

Ed

I am in the OCD boat with you.

So my question is, if I feel I passed, does that mean I really passed?

I don't know. If I had just slammed that test and worked out and answered 80 to 90% of the problems ( leaving open the possibility that I got "tricked" by unit conversion here or there), I would probably feel pretty confident that I had passed and would probably be right.

Instead, I think I worked and answered 60% right (possible trip-ups in there could lower that number some), then made educated guesses on some, then filled in the dots on some.

I ran a spreadsheet estimate that says I got between 52 and 58 right, with the average at 54.

So I am in no man's land!

Ed

Well there were some major unit conversions, too difficult for the exam to trick us on. I believe if we could work out the unit conversions and still come up with the correct answer, we should end up ok.

I was blasting the PM WR and only stumbled on a couple of questions. I have a contractor with tons of work waiting for my PE as-well. Let's hope for good news at the end of June.

Anybody know how long after we pass the seals can be ordered?

Check out either the ELSES or the "the other board" site. I remember in the FAQ section of one of them that the question came up. I think its something like you can buy it whenever- even right now, but you can't actually use it until the number is issued. Of course, the flaw in that is how do they make a seal without the number? But I swear I thought I heard it answered that way.

Ed

I have seen seals where there is a line for the engineer to write his license number in. That's got to be a pain in the ass do to that every time.

What we have at our office is an electronic seal that matches the dimensions/style of the stamp. We put that on the drawings, and the engineer just signs it.

If mine comes through, I'd like to make one for myself!

wait were we supposed to use the scan tron sheet for our answers? I just circled the answer in the book

Just Kidding

I filled in the answet sheet as I went.

I freaked out anytime I had to skip a question, because I was so afraid I'd screw up my answer sheet.

Get to question 50, and realize I was only on bubble 48.

After I finished, I double checked to make sure I had the right answer in the right bubble. I didn't really re-attempt any of the questions, because it would have been so easy to second guess some of them and muck around with it. :true:

Question 50????

Each session only had 40 questions! :blink: Don't scare/ confuse me like that.

They were numbers 101 thru 140 and 501 through 540. However, the answer sheet did go to 150 and 550 for some reason.

I'm not sure, but I think mine had a few hanging chads as well!

Ed

I think the envrionmental test had 100 total questions?

The full environmental exam (not civil with envl PM) has 100 questions.

101-150 in the AM, 501-550 in the PM. No choice of an afternoon section.

I've never gotten a straight answer as to why it has 100 questions, when all the others have 80. Any ideas? :dunno:

It was really a broad exam, minimal depth with that many questions. Lots of qualitative questions, especially on environmental laws and OSHA regs, where there isn't much calculating you can ask for.

Yeah the enviro test has 100.

so is it a lot of "legal" questions?

my father in law works for tyson (manages chicken plants & such) he said his environmental engineers main job is to keep him from going to prison...

There were not as many on the actual exam as I had been expecting from the review books and practice tests.

You need to have a basic knowledge of key environmental laws: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, Superfund, Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, etc.

Then you also need to know some occupational and public health stuff: OSHA regulations, protective clothing, fire extinguishers, radiation

There's a whole lot of material you need to at least have a basic idea about.

Has anyone ever heard of the seal companies getting the list of passing engineers early, so they can mail order forms to them?

I was just thinking of trying to pose as one of those companies. h43r: