Test Taking Strategy

[tbfreeland]

What are some guessing strategies? Hopefully, guessing will be minimized! Is it best to go through your unanswered questions at the end and just pick a B (for example) all the way through, or just pick different letters at random? Thoughts?

 

[Chris B]

My strategy was to work through the problems without reading them all first. If there was a problem that I wasn't sure how to solve, I circled the problem and moved on. After going through all the problems, I went back and solved the ones I skipped. If I had further doubts, I marked my best guess (usually I was able to eliminate one or two of the choices). Then I went back and double checked all my answers. In the morning session, I had plenty of time and was able to triple check.

 

[Relvinim]

The problems that are frustrating are the areas you know really well but are not getting an answer that matches the 4 options. At some point you have to move on.
For me the biggest problem can be stupid mistakes. I often times will forget a squared term or something like that. Mistakes like this are not always easy to find.

Also when I am calm I write clearly and precisely, but my penmanship deteriorates with stress.

Hopefully I will be okay once I am well rested. I know some of the dumb mistakes are due to being tired.

Units can be a killer too. Sometimes you might feel like rushing and not carrying through the units, but this can often times really burn you. That time unit in gc can be the difference!

Sometimes that's a good thing. It's the problems that you get an answer that matches and automatically assume it's right. That's where they trick you. If you don't match any of the answers you know you made a mistake along the way. The solutions as I remember were not too intesive and I don't recall too many problems where I didn't come close to an answer. You will do fine...just stay focused the whole 8 hrs. Then afterwards have a few martinis and a cigar like i did!

 

[Master slacker]

Speaking of units, for each problem, I made sure that I wrote the answer's units on my paper before I started so I wouldn't screw it up.

 

[Kephart P.E.]

I worked the morning section straight thru cause I seemed to know most of the problems right away.

I skimmed the afternoon and was glad I did - because for me the later questions seemed much easier than the first 10-15.

 

[snickerd3]

Speaking of units, for each problem, I made sure that I wrote the answer's units on my paper before I started so I wouldn't screw it up.

UNITS UNITS UNITS!!!!!!! very important as they are not included in the answer choices, only the problem statement. The same answer in different units could likely be a answer option.

 

[Coastal Engineer]

I took each problem one at a time. If I didn't understand it right away I went to the next problem. I panicked at first because the first few problems threw me off but then once I got to the MD problems they were easy for me and i settled into a groove. Then at the end I came back to the ones I skipped. Whatever you do, don't get too hung up on any one problem unless you have the time to spare. If you prepared you will do well and walk out of there feeling relieved.

This is what I did as well. If after 1 minute I didn't see the path to solving the problem, I went to the next problem and came back to it. In the end I believe I had 5 or 6 that I skipped on the first pass and came back to, but I still had 1 hour to solve these problems so it wasn't impossible.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I did 'em in order. Skimming and ranking seemed like a waste of time to me, plus I was afraid I'd end up crossing over parts of one problem to another. If I had no clue how to do one, or it seemed like it would take forever, I just skipped it.

 

[NBeebe]

I read through the first problem, and if I knew it would take me 3-4 min or less, I solved it. If it was a long one or I was unsure of the content, I skipped it and came back to it on the 2nd pass. Morning session (I took civil-structural) took 3:15 which gave me 45 mins to go through and verify all of my calcs, which I used all 45 mins to complete. Afternoon session I used the same approach, but of course most of the problems are much more involved in the afternoon. Got through about 32 questions before 15 mins was called, then 2 more until 5 min left. The last 6 were educated guesses with about one min per problem.