I took chem e the first time in april '10.
I studied for about 200 hours, literally until I couldn't think of any other material to cover. I'd say, which was probably way more than I needed (I hope, right?)
Here's what I did:
I took the practice test untimed and I got more than half right.
My first order of business was to work on the weak parts that the test identified (in my case, distillation, adsorption, mass transfer, and indexing "trivia" sections in the ChERM 5th ed.) until they were strong parts, using the Lindeburg supplemental problems*.
I remembered from the FE that there would be some questions in the practice exam that were almost exactly like what appeared on the real test but that the practice test is a lot harder...it wasn't quite like that this time. The practice test was only a little harder, but not as much of a copy of the real test. It was still waay closer than any of the ppi problems.
My second order of business was to get to where I could do any of the sample test problems in under two minutes without using any published references (unless it was a steam table, TEMA table, or a "trivia" section). I made a single page crib sheet that contained the most common constants in different unit systems, hard to find conversion factors, and common mistakes (ie how to spot where they are trying to trip me up on a unit conversion, wt% vs fraction, etc.), and other notes to myself.
Anything that required an involved method (such as the NTU for heat exchangers) got a separate crib sheet that explained the fastest way to group terms to get it done in under two minutes. I went through the practice test a third time to verify that I could recognize everything in it and solve it from memory in under two minutes.
My third order of business was to go through the exam topic specifications line-by-line and read textbook chapters on them. I would also do a couple fundamentals problems out of the relevant textbooks' relevant chapters if I got the feeling that was necessary (did a lot of extra work on VLE, for instance).
I also took a lot of notes that simplified the concepts in the textbooks in the ways that I thought NCEES could actually formulate a test question about them. I feel like this was where I made most of my key breakthroughs in preparation. I also indexed Perry's for the trivia sections around this point.
My fourth order of business, the last thing I did, was read through the practice test problems a fourth time. This time, I read it really close, in order to see into the mind of NCEES, if you'll pardon the expression. My main purpose was to try and visualize what other NCEES problems might look like, what could they change about the questions over these topics without making them prohibitively difficult, what did I see in the textbooks that these problems demonstrate, what "trivia" do the solutions of the problems infer. Stuff like that.
Now, I haven't gotten my results yet, but I did finish an 8 hour test in under 5:30.
*supplemental problems were for the 6th ed, so it was kinda confusing at first because I had the 5th ed. ChERM. I read here that the 5th ed. is superior to the 6th ed for chemical, so I guess I got lucky.
