April 2014 - PM exam

[I M A PE]

I'm surprised at how many people here took the Mechanical Systems depth. Nobody else who did Thermal & Fluids wants to comment? Seriously, I got my ass kicked in the afternoon and I would feel fantastic if someone could share my misery.

Hearing someone say they took MD depth and "solved almost 36 and still had 30 minutes to check" is making me **** a brick. That was NOT my experience with T&F depth.

I answered all the MD PM questions with 10 minutes to spare but that doesn't translate into confidence. I got reasonable answers for most of them. Only stumped on a few but I am very worried about the "factor of 12" or 144 or 32.2 type mistakes that are very easily made. I tried to be super careful about units and *think* I did a good job. But who knows. 6 minutes average on that PM is DEFINITELY a rush job. Hard to be sure that every i is dotted and every T is crossed.

There were also several that I had no idea initially how to approach so I was figuring it out during the exam. I am wondering if NCEES anticipates a hack like me finding what seems to be the right equation to plug and chug and using the wrong one. Like I said, I got answers that matched choices but that doesn't mean I got them right. I can see the potential for lots and lots of that. I don't think finishing the test with a few minutes to spare guarantees success.

 

[Bosco PE]

I took the T&F depth. After my first pass through all 40 questions, I was freaking out. I counted them up and only had about 20 answered. Once I calmed down and went through on the second pass, I gained back confidence because I was able to solve the other 20. Every question I solved I had an available answer choice to select.

STILL SHITTING A BRICK HERE.

 

[SNAPE/SMOTT PE]

You are correct, I struggled with afternoon.

 

[I M A PE]

I took the T&F depth. After my first pass through all 40 questions, I was freaking out. I counted them up and only had about 20 answered. Once I calmed down and went through on the second pass, I gained back confidence because I was able to solve the other 20. Every question I solved I had an available answer choice to select.

Exactly how I felt about the PM exam. I can remember looking at my answer sheet and there was an entire collumn of 10 questions without answers filled in. I'd skipped 10 in a row because I skimmed the problem statement and *thought* I had no clue and they were beyond me. I was a little freaked out but I kept my head. The second time through, on closer examination, most of them were much simpler than I'd originally thought. By "simpler" I only mean that they weren't impossible. Turns out there was a lot of superfluous information. Man, MERM is a lifesaver. That and my review course.

 

[Golden Eagle PE]

You are correct, I struggled with afternoon.

I bet you will pass.............even if you had to guess on some questions, you have to figure that you will get about 25% of those correct.

 

[SNAPE/SMOTT PE]

Golden Eagle, gauging your experience taking the exam with mine, if I passed so did you!

 

[Golden Eagle PE]

Maybe. I studied hard but the afternoon was tough. I still struggle in coming up with a number of how many correct answers I got.

Sigh. Maybe this weekend I should work on deriving the cut score again using my spreadsheet.

 

[balavay]

How many of you took a review course? Which one and would you recommend it?

 

[Golden Eagle PE]

School of pe is good. I think it helped me alot on the exam. It is expensive but the instructors are knowledgeable. We will see when I get my results!

 

[speedbump]

I also took the MD depth. Like everyone had mentioned, it was pretty difficult. I felt so humbled once it was done.

I know I did very well in the AM (School of PE helped tremendously).

I'm holding out hope that I did enough to pass.

The wait is so agonizing....

 

[Lumber Jim]

It gets worse...

 

[SNAPE/SMOTT PE]

Just lots of time working as many problems as possible. MERM, 2001&2008 NCEES practice exams, all three 6MS, Carlos Chapek exams. Had Lindeburg practice exam, but didn't get to it.

It's called "Homeschoolin for the PE" review course!

 

[I M A PE]

Just lots of time working as many problems as possible. MERM, 2001&2008 NCEES practice exams, all three 6MS, Carlos Chapek exams. Had Lindeburg practice exam, but didn't get to it.

It's called "Homeschoolin for the PE" review course!

If I didn't pass, this is what I'm doing next. I think the review course got me pretty far and all that could help now is lots and lots of representative, timed practice problems. I could be faster knowing exactly where everything is in MERM, memorizing more equations, and fine tuning my highlighting and "must know" equation sheets. Practice problems will help with all of this in addition to training me to be bullet proof on units errors and the like.

Why can't the whole world just be in metric? Convert inches to miles? Let me get my calculator. Convert mm to km? Let me move this decimal.

 

[ofareggie]

I also took the mechanical systems PM, I felt pretty good about the AM. For the PM, I probably answered about 30 of the 40 in 3 hours, went back and figured out about 6 or 7 of the ones I skipped, intelligently guessed on the rest. Of course I now have those thoughts that the answers I came up were the bogus "off by a factor of 12 or 32" answers... but I don't think there is anyway around that.

Additionally, I took the last 2 minutes to make sure the answer I bubbled matched the answer I actually calculated, and I found one glaring stupid mistake and corrected it as the proctor announced "pencils down, no more writing or erasing". I hope the streak I left on the scantron doesn't invalidate that answer...

 

[ofareggie]

Also, my prep consisted of:

• School of PE review - I have mixed feelings. Helped for the AM, some instructors were pretty awful though, at least it forced me to put the time in (6 hours Saturday and Sunday)
  
• 2-3 hours after work, 3-4 days a week, for about 5-6 weeks prior to the exam
  
• A lot of time in prayer
  
• MERM example problems - forced me to go through the MERM and go over some concepts and chapters that I would have skipped and that School of PE didn't cover.
  
• 2 NCEES practice tests, and 1 practice test by Lindeburg. A few problems on the Exam I just pulled out one of my practice tests and copied the process verbatim.
  

 

[I M A PE]

Ha. At the very last minute I found a glaring mistake in the AM. I rushed to change my answer after the 1 minute warning. Then I walked out for lunch wondering if my first answer had been right and I'd panicked and made a units error with my "correction". I'll never know. I had to make a fast decision and I made it. Hope it was the right one.

 

[Memozee]

[SIZE=13.5pt]I took Mechanical - Thermal / Fluids depth and as most of us here my morning went good but the afternoon kicked my left nutt. I had similar feeling of thinking "where to hang my PE license" after the morning exam but the afternoon session has taken all that joy away.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]On my way back from exam I started calculating what the "cut-score" would be...in an attempt to see if I stand a chance on passing my exam. It’s later that I realized that I am trying to arrive a number with very few knowns and bunch of unknowns...so thats out.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Morning Exam: I felt that I might have scored about 70%[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Afternoon Exam: 15 (solid) + 15 (good engineering guesses..have spend a lot of time trying to solve but ended up guessing on the closest numbers I computed) x 0.4 + 10 (random guess as I ran out of time) x 0.2.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Therefore:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Morning: 40 x 0.7 = 28[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Afternoon: 15+6+2 = 23[/SIZE]

[SIZE=13.5pt]Total: 51 / 80 ~ 63% raw..NOT SURE IF THIS IS ENOUGH!!![/SIZE]

 

[Memozee]

Took School of PE….the weekend option. My review of school of PE:

- Thermo & HVAC Instructors – Very Good

- Fluids & Machine Design Instructor – Fairly Good

- Engineering Econ & Project Management Science Instructor – Awful

Overall it was a decent review and would recommend it for morning ONLY.

 

[Bosco PE]

It comforts me that Memozee sounds as paranoid as I am. My estimates:

Morning: 32-34, or 80%-85%

Afternoon: 20-22, or 50-55%

Overall: 52-56, or 65%-70%

This is probably right on the borderline.

 

[Golden Eagle PE]

bosco115, you are probably right on the edge. I have to admit that I did the same analysis in my head. I came up with a range of answers I think I got right on each AM and PM exam. Hopefully I was correct. We will see soon.

What PM exam did you take?