TheDude239
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My site in Miami was a large conference hall and it was full. Granted everyone was at their own tables and well-spaced out.
October 2021 Post Exam Wait Period - Welcome to the Suck
- Thread starter RBHeadge PE
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Help Support Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum:
What's your definition of "full?" Ours was at the convention center in a big conference hall but we were spaced out with our own tables and had maybe 20 people max.
TheDude239
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There were hundreds of people there easily, more than the site I was at in April in the Orlando Area.
Assistant to the RM
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I assume that's still at the Scheman Building at Iowa State? I took it there 10 years ago, I thought there was a location in eastern Iowa as well but maybe not, I don't recall for sure. I suppose as some disciplines have already gone to CBT and demand for in-person test centers has decreased they could've consolidated to one location.
Welcome. Looks like I'll be doing a Canada map again this year.
I don't understand your question. What are asking about?
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I don't know about Eastern Iowa - they haven't had one here since I have been taking the exam- or I would go there instead.
It is still at the Scheman building, although in April one of the days was on the stage of Stephens auditorium.Assistant to the RM
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Ha - no added pressure, but you'll be taking your exam on stage in a 2500 seat auditorium! Hopefully there wasn't an audienceI don't know about Eastern Iowa - they haven't had one here since I have been taking the exam- or I would go there instead.
I took it it in NYC in the ballroom of a Hotel by Newark airport! (didn't even know that New Jersey was considered NYC area!) I would say there were at least two rooms and my room were at least 80 people. I took Transportation and felt that the morning was harder than the April 2021 , the afternoon was def easier than the April 2021. I really don't want to do this ever again!!!!!!!!! with all your support we will get through this together. Thank you guys for doing this threats... I really appreciate it!
, the afternoon was def easier than the April 2021. I really don't want to do this ever again!!!!!!!!! with all your support we will get through this together. Thank you guys for doing this threats... I really appreciate it!
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Right? The lighting was very strange, and if you scooted your chair or dropped something, it reverberated horribly.Ha - no added pressure, but you'll be taking your exam on stage in a 2500 seat auditorium! Hopefully there wasn't an audience
Hamilton_PE
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For you veterans that had to take the PE multiple times and have passed: how did you feel after taking the test the time you passed? Did you feel different than after the previous attempt(s)? I took the test this spring and felt pretty ok about it. Thought I passed. Took it again and I felt about the same coming out of it as I did in April. Should I have felt a lot better about it if I passed? Or is feeling like a complete idiot after taking the test normal whether you pass or fail? Civil Structural if that matters.
I took the electrical power PE (15+ years design experience in electrical design/consulting, but with a BS in mechanical engineering). My results vs how I felt:
October 2018: 6 months of preparation and took a class. Felt like and told everyone I had a 50-50 chance of passing. Failed with a 43/80 score. I felt like I did my best though and figured I would pass it on my next attempt.
October 2019: We seriously considered moving in the spring and put our house on the market. Changed our minds, but under circumstances decided not to take the April exam. Took October exam and studied 5 months before the course. Didn't take a class, tried an alternate strategy taking tons of multiple different practice exams. Definitely put in tons of effort. After the exam, I felt I definitely did better than last time and felt I had a 60-75% of passing. Turns out I did WORSE, 40/80. Felt completely dejected. Felt bad for my wife and son since I spent so much time away from them. Questioned if I should even continue my pursuit. One of my supervisors even questioned my dedication/study habits. Really pissed me off. I left the company. In hindsight, it was a good decision. A few people on here helped keep my head up and encouraged me to keep going.
December 1, 2020 (1st CBT date offered): Took a different class this time. It was really the same class from the April 2020 P/P exam, but of course the exam got cancelled, re-scheduled for October 2020, then THAT one got cancelled, then the P/P got cancelled and only CBT offered. So I took the first available date and felt completely thrown off by many of the questions. Still felt like I had a decent chance of passing, but no, I failed with a roughly 50% score, so basically no improvement. I had gone through a lot of personal hell in that year, including a shoulder injury, the whole Covid stuff (including getting Covid in September), experiencing unethical practices from my new employer and quitting that company for my current employer (which has been a wonderful experience I'm happy to report). If it weren't for several people here on EB and my circle of friends on here who got me through 2020, I might have quit the PE pursuit. I tried not to beat myself up about it too much.
March 2021 (2nd CBT attempt): After first half of the exam, I almost quit and went home. Many of the exam question types seemed to have change a lot. I felt like I was trying to hit a moving target at this point. I vented to my wife during lunch and she calmed me down and talked me into going back in. Felt like I did a lot worse, but in fact I did better, over 60% but still failed. This felt encouraging, and my wife was my biggest cheerleader. My new company was so supportivev. Also, my course instructor had a 100% guarantee to re-take the course if I didn't pass, so I kept my head in it full bore. NEVER GIVE UP!
June 10, 2021 (3rd CBT attempt): I basically kicked the exam in the nuts. Every time I clicked on an answer and felt sure about it, I envisioned kicking someone in the nuts. Click. Nuts. Next question. Repeat. Nothing can stop a person who doesn't quit. Looking back, sometimes I'm not sure how I did it. How I had the mental strength to keep going back upstairs to my man-cave (which started out as my man-cave, but I ended up calling "hell", but now it's my man-cave again
) to study over and over and over again. I felt like I passed, but I was so cautiously negative about it I think myself and my family were so pleasantly surprised when I got the results. I yelled in excitement at work and pretty much scared the shit out of the entire office. June 16th, 2021, the day I found out I PASSED! I will never forget!
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I don't know. I did feel a TON better about the PE that I passed vs the one I did not. The SE, the first time, I KNEW I did not pass. April however, I felt I did awesome on, and while there was a huge improvement in the afternoon, the morning was not stellar (and the afternoon was not quite good enough to pass.) This past time, the morning felt good. But so did the April exam. The afternoon I struggled a little on one of the questions, but the other three seemed to go okay. Guess I will find out at christmas.
Hamilton_PE
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That is both inspiring and depressingI took the electrical power PE (15+ years design experience in electrical design/consulting, but with a BS in mechanical engineering). My results vs how I felt:
October 2018: 6 months of preparation and took a class. Felt like and told everyone I had a 50-50 chance of passing. Failed with a 43/80 score. I felt like I did my best though and figured I would pass it on my next attempt.
October 2019: We seriously considered moving in the spring and put our house on the market. Changed our minds, but under circumstances decided not to take the April exam. Took October exam and studied 5 months before the course. Didn't take a class, tried an alternate strategy taking tons of multiple different practice exams. Definitely put in tons of effort. After the exam, I felt I definitely did better than last time and felt I had a 60-75% of passing. Turns out I did WORSE, 40/80. Felt completely dejected. Felt bad for my wife and son since I spent so much time away from them. Questioned if I should even continue my pursuit. One of my supervisors even questioned my dedication/study habits. Really pissed me off. I left the company. In hindsight, it was a good decision. A few people on here helped keep my head up and encouraged me to keep going.
December 1, 2020 (1st CBT date offered): Took a different class this time. It was really the same class from the April 2020 P/P exam, but of course the exam got cancelled, re-scheduled for October 2020, then THAT one got cancelled, then the P/P got cancelled and only CBT offered. So I took the first available date and felt completely thrown off by many of the questions. Still felt like I had a decent chance of passing, but no, I failed with a roughly 50% score, so basically no improvement. I had gone through a lot of personal hell in that year, including a shoulder injury, the whole Covid stuff (including getting Covid in September), experiencing unethical practices from my new employer and quitting that company for my current employer (which has been a wonderful experience I'm happy to report). If it weren't for several people here on EB and my circle of friends on here who got me through 2020, I might have quit the PE pursuit. I tried not to beat myself up about it too much.
March 2021 (2nd CBT attempt): After first half of the exam, I almost quit and went home. Many of the exam question types seemed to have change a lot. I felt like I was trying to hit a moving target at this point. I vented to my wife during lunch and she calmed me down and talked me into going back in. Felt like I did a lot worse, but in fact I did better, over 60% but still failed. This felt encouraging, and my wife was my biggest cheerleader. My new company was so supportivev. Also, my course instructor had a 100% guarantee to re-take the course if I didn't pass, so I kept my head in it full bore. NEVER GIVE UP!
June 10, 2021 (3rd CBT attempt): I basically kicked the exam in the nuts. Every time I clicked on an answer and felt sure about it, I envisioned kicking someone in the nuts. Click. Nuts. Next question. Repeat. Nothing can stop a person who doesn't quit. Looking back, sometimes I'm not sure how I did it. How I had the mental strength to keep going back upstairs to my man-cave (which started out as my man-cave, but I ended up calling "hell", but now it's my man-cave again
It's complicated.
I took nuclear, but my story is discipline agnostic.
I didn't study well the first exam. Probably less than 80 hours and mostly in the month before the exam. I didn't bring as many references as I should because they had "pencil marks" and that was forbidden at the time. I walked out of the exam building knowing that I just got my ass kicked... kicked hard. I thought the exam was a lot of easy problems, with only a few insanely difficult ones. But they were easy problems that I didn't know how or couldn't solve (wrong experience, lack of references). I held out hope that if the cut-score was low enough that I could have squeaked out a pass.
Pro-tip: if you're resting all hope on a low cut score then you probably failed.
I think deep in my subconscious I knew that I failed, but I managed to always get good grades in the past without much effort so I was in denial that failure was an option. Learning I failed was really rough. But I can honestly say that it made me a better engineer and person in the long run. I actually don't regret failing the first attempt. No way the immediate-post-failure version of myself would want to hear that, but it's the truth.
Next go around I greatly improved my study habits, took it very seriously, and became very regimented. Studied 2-3 hr/day, every day starting 100 days out. Week before was nearly continuous studying. Actively sought out references to bring to the exam. Thankfully pencil marks were no longer an issue. Brough two milk cases of references. But I probably only had to touch six of the two dozen I brought. I was very prepared.
For the second attempt I set a goal of getting a self scored 75% on the exam. No one outside of NCEES knows the cut score, but 75% is certainly a pass. The first 30 minutes of the exam were rough but I settled in and walked out to lunch having easily met my 75% goal. I was sitting in my car, eating a hotel bagel, knowing that I would see a green box in December. All stress was gone!
Then the afternoon session happened. Had a few questions on a subject I wasn't prepared for and guessed more than I would have liked. Walked out of the building with a self score of 56.67/80. Just a hair above the mythical (and false) 70% threshold. Way too borderline for my comfort. Too much uncertainty in the self-scoring to be supremely confident in the results. The second exam had much more difficult questions, but despite the difficulty I was able to answer the most of questions without issue. In retrospect I had nothing to worry about.
But that didn't stop me from stressing out for the next couple months. My daily 2-3 hr study time was over, so I replaced it my going to the gym and burning off the stress. Got myself in great shape that I still maintain.
That was the Oct 2014 wait period. One of the longest waits in the two decades. It was brutal and found some support here. This thread and its predecessors exist because I wanted to help out future exam takers through what I called: "the suck".
Obviously I passed that session. But that's a story for another time.
I took nuclear, but my story is discipline agnostic.
I didn't study well the first exam. Probably less than 80 hours and mostly in the month before the exam. I didn't bring as many references as I should because they had "pencil marks" and that was forbidden at the time. I walked out of the exam building knowing that I just got my ass kicked... kicked hard. I thought the exam was a lot of easy problems, with only a few insanely difficult ones. But they were easy problems that I didn't know how or couldn't solve (wrong experience, lack of references). I held out hope that if the cut-score was low enough that I could have squeaked out a pass.
Pro-tip: if you're resting all hope on a low cut score then you probably failed.
I think deep in my subconscious I knew that I failed, but I managed to always get good grades in the past without much effort so I was in denial that failure was an option. Learning I failed was really rough. But I can honestly say that it made me a better engineer and person in the long run. I actually don't regret failing the first attempt. No way the immediate-post-failure version of myself would want to hear that, but it's the truth.
Next go around I greatly improved my study habits, took it very seriously, and became very regimented. Studied 2-3 hr/day, every day starting 100 days out. Week before was nearly continuous studying. Actively sought out references to bring to the exam. Thankfully pencil marks were no longer an issue. Brough two milk cases of references. But I probably only had to touch six of the two dozen I brought. I was very prepared.
For the second attempt I set a goal of getting a self scored 75% on the exam. No one outside of NCEES knows the cut score, but 75% is certainly a pass. The first 30 minutes of the exam were rough but I settled in and walked out to lunch having easily met my 75% goal. I was sitting in my car, eating a hotel bagel, knowing that I would see a green box in December. All stress was gone!
Then the afternoon session happened. Had a few questions on a subject I wasn't prepared for and guessed more than I would have liked. Walked out of the building with a self score of 56.67/80. Just a hair above the mythical (and false) 70% threshold. Way too borderline for my comfort. Too much uncertainty in the self-scoring to be supremely confident in the results. The second exam had much more difficult questions, but despite the difficulty I was able to answer the most of questions without issue. In retrospect I had nothing to worry about.
But that didn't stop me from stressing out for the next couple months. My daily 2-3 hr study time was over, so I replaced it my going to the gym and burning off the stress. Got myself in great shape that I still maintain.
That was the Oct 2014 wait period. One of the longest waits in the two decades. It was brutal and found some support here. This thread and its predecessors exist because I wanted to help out future exam takers through what I called: "the suck".
Obviously I passed that session. But that's a story for another time.
All: We're starting a new round of mafia tomorrow. It's a great way to meet nee people on the forum, becoming part of the community, and distracting yourself from the exam. I highly recommend joining us for a round or two:
https://engineerboards.com/threads/eb-mafia.33851/page-1475
https://engineerboards.com/threads/eb-mafia.33851/page-1475
I PASSED THE FIRST TIME!!!! SUCK IT LOSERS!!!!!!!
For those on here that don't know me well. Trust that was said in jest and in fun.
I'm confident that most of you are well prepared and will pass your first time, but even if you don't, you'll get it next time. There are so many great examples of perseverance. (Even if I'm not one of them.)
December 12th 2019 for receiving my results. it was a long wait.
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