"the other board" Civil Practice Exam

[OneArm]

I heard the "the other board" Civil Practice Exam is way more difficult than the real thing. Any thoughts?

 

[Guest]

^^ I think it is kinda difficult to make a broad brush statement that the exam is easier/harder.

I would say that it provides you with a realistic expectation for how problems would be structured and presented. Difficulty is really subjective as you and I would probably differ on what would seem easy vs what may seem difficult.

My recommendation - focus on the mechanics of reading the problems and quickly understanding what you need to do based on how the problem is presented rather than the perceived difficulty of any given problem or the practice exam as a whole.

:2cents:

JR

 

[lemntwist]

In the intro to that practice exam it says that it is harder than to be expected on the exam. But he does that so you take his exam, cry and then go into the real one and fly by and hopefully pass and think it was easy.

that's how i read it

In my opinion, it was a lot harder than the probs from the NCEES book. (morn and depth)

 

[Casey]

I found it a lot harder and the solutions were more detailed...

So when I went into NCEES practice exam thinking that the difficulty of questions there was greater than what it actually was... So, by trying to find a complex solution I wasted a lot of time and had to guess on a few questions during my timed run. Reading the solutions there were a lot of "Oh crap! That's easy! Why didn't I think of that?"...

I think someone on the board said "If you find yourself going into a lot of detail for your solution, you are probably getting it wrong"... I think that is good advice and will verify it after Friday...

 

[Tido]

What I think that the PE Sample and six minute solns make them look harder is that some of the questions realy take a lot of time. First, I started to time myself with the six minute and PE exam and I stopped immediately. The reason is you will spend half of the time looking for the parameters than solving the quetion itself and your answer is dependent on some subjective parameter selection. I can give you one example from six minute: find a pump operting range. If you know how to find the minimum operating value through the system curve and pump performance data you probably know how to find the other end. Why make people repeat the same step with just different values. That's where I don't agree. While the NCEES exam just check your knowledge of the subject area, which I think is the right thing to do but that doesn't make it easy. If you know the concept some of them are a 1 or 2 minute question.

Of course my 2 cents.

Best to everybody