NCEES questions and solutions

[PEin2010]

Are the problems in the Structural depth portion of the NCEES sample questions and solutions (2008) similar to what can be expected in the PM portion of the exam, or are the exam problems more easier or difficult than the NCEES book?

Thanks.

 

[dastuff]

I'd say across the board most of the problems you get out of these books are harder than you'll see on the test. The sample questions book has problems that took me an hour, so 6min was out the window.

That being said, by studying the more difficult problems it should be easier for you to take the test. They also like to take parts from the large problems to simplify them and make them 6min.

 

[PEin2010]

I'd say across the board most of the problems you get out of these books are harder than you'll see on the test. The sample questions book has problems that took me an hour, so 6min was out the window.
That being said, by studying the more difficult problems it should be easier for you to take the test. They also like to take parts from the large problems to simplify them and make them 6min.

Good to know it's not just me taking an hour to solve some of those problems!

 

[Ble_PE]

Honestly, I felt that the NCEES sample q&as were very similar to the problems you are going to see on the PE. They are much closer than the 6 min solutions and other practice problem books. I believe the book has 20 problems for the afternoon section. You should be able to do these 20 problems in 2 hours, or at least very close to 2 hours. Don't get frustrated if they take you longer to begin with, but you should be pretty comfortable with problems with that level of difficultly by exam time.

 

[dastuff]

Honestly, I felt that the NCEES sample q&as were very similar to the problems you are going to see on the PE. They are much closer than the 6 min solutions and other practice problem books. I believe the book has 20 problems for the afternoon section. You should be able to do these 20 problems in 2 hours, or at least very close to 2 hours. Don't get frustrated if they take you longer to begin with, but you should be pretty comfortable with problems with that level of difficultly by exam time.

Let me expand on my original statement:

The "Practice Problems for the Civil Engineering PE Exam" had numerous problems that would say "time limit:1 hr". Those questions would normally have numerous parts (say 6 parts), and I found the exam would give you enough information and ask you to solve for 1 of those 6. This is what i was referring to (In general i found a majority of the structural problems would be very difficult in this book to complete in 6 minutes). I found that they were helpful for the test but that the test simplified the question to make them possible to be done in 6 minutes.

There is also the "Civil PE Sample Examinations" I thought the afternoon portion of this exam was similar but still slightly more difficult than the exam (say 10% harder). This is a good sample of what you may be expected to know and solve for during a test. Similar to this test is the 6 min solution test.. This one is much harder than the actual test. If you could torture your way through understanding all of this then you should be well on your way to passing.

The short of it is the problems you are doing take longer and are most often harder (in my own opinion) to what I found on the test. That being said i don't think i would have passed the test if i hadn't practiced these more difficult problems till my fingers bled. By practicing the more difficult problems over and over again you find quicker ways to do the problems that you'll find during the NCEES exam. You also make all the mistakes or fall into all the traps that can be set (and hopefully recognize them for the real deal).

Hopefully that cleared everything up