Oct 2018 Exam - Thoughts?

What were your thoughts on the exam? This was my first time taking Construction after attempting to take Structural. 

The morning was harder than the past times I’ve taken it. Last cycle was easy and a breeze. This one was hard, mostly because it was heavy on my two weakest subjects: soils and hydrology. 

The afternoon was meh... there were a lot of terms I’ve never heard of and questions that couldn’t be found in a book. The depth was 5x easier than Structural but still hard. I’m a bit disappointed in how I think I did. I just needed a few more hours lol.

what did y’all think?

I also took construction. AM was mostly geotech, and I agree it wasn't simple. I did very good in sample exams for AM even in Goswami but there were so many test procedures and areas that needed to be checked in CERM and it was time consuming. I also found geotech ones tricky, but found trasportation, water and construction easy...PM was ok. I was expecting more difficult but some of them were even easy. Temporary structures was my weakness... 2, 3 problems were from ACI, some from Osha, one from AISC (bolt) which was hard to understand and pick! 

Really hope we pass!

I also thought the AM portion was really tough. Much harder than the practice exam. I didn’t think it was heavy in geotech but I generally thought all the questions were tricky. I’m a geotech engineer and I thought to myself “geez, anyone who’s not strong in geotech will find these questions tough”. I thought the practice exam had more simple problems (simple geometry, one-step formulas) but there were very few of those on the actual exam. Maybe I was just unlucky and wasn’t as familiar with the types of problems that showed up. Fingers crossed!

I hope to hear more from others. This is my 4th time taking the PE so I've become a veteran.  There's always a "theme" for the breadth. The times that it is heavy in structures, I do well in and most people have difficulty.  Unfortunately, this was heavy in areas I'm not comfortable with. I did waste a lot of time as well searching through. It was a weird breadth.  It does go down as probably the second hardest breadth of I've done. Last cycle's was the easiest and most straight forward, i thought.  It was the only one I ever felt was similar or easier than the NCEES practice exam.  It showed in people's results too.  All of us who failed last cycle's structural (i switch from structural to construction this time around) all had high scores in the morning around 30, but the afternoon was so difficult, we all go below 20 and failed. As for the Construction depth, i spent so much time looking things up.  Some of the non calculation problems, you almost have to be in the industry as a construction manager to be able to know. I'm very uncomfortable at this point about how I did...

Anyone else took the construction exam? How did you feel about the am and pm sections?

I felt like the morning was almost a “greatest hits” of NCEES sample problems. 

Aftwrnoon was was tough but also felt pretty good. As long as you know where to go in your references. 

Do you think They'll release the results in the next couple weeks? I read that NCEES is releasing them early this year after all the upgrades to their system this year with the transition to CBT in other disciplines, which has helped speed up the scan-tron results to get released faster

I feel like the morning was fairly easy. I knew I should have study the water resources which the am section was heavy in the middle of the morning section. The afternoon had a couple of questions that I could not find anything in my references. There was one cut and fill question in the PM section that is still tormenting me now. I contacted NCEES about that question because I either didn't understand the question clearly or maybe I am just an idiot however they said they can't provide the answers to the questions. Not even what assumption should have been used to solve the problem. If I fail i won't feel to bad because overall the test wasn't difficult I just feel that there was too many subjects to prepare for adequately specially since I have two toddlers at home. Anyway good luck to everyone and not give up if you fail! Turns out the geo department manager where I work at took it 5 times so that kind of has settled my nerves and to not give up if I fail this time again. 

teab said:

Do you think They'll release the results in the next couple weeks? I read that NCEES is releasing them early this year after all the upgrades to their system this year with the transition to CBT in other disciplines, which has helped speed up the scan-tron results to get released faster

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The results won't be out before Nov 30.

teab said:

Do you think They'll release the results in the next couple weeks? I read that NCEES is releasing them early this year after all the upgrades to their system this year with the transition to CBT in other disciplines, which has helped speed up the scan-tron results to get released faster

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You are trolling yourself

ME_VT_PE said:

You are trolling yourself

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I thought trolling wasn't allowed on here? I probably legit heard that about the CBT back when I found out I passed my PE in December 2017

teab said:

I thought trolling wasn't allowed on here?

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And that's why you never see it happen on these forums.

teab said:

 I probably legit heard that about the CBT back when I found out I passed my PE in December 2017

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The exams that transitioned to CBT send out the results faster. I think its 8-10 days? But it tends to be less in practice.

The scantron results still take just as long as they always have.

How did anyone else think they did? Results should come out this week!!

mnguy88 said:

How did anyone else think they did? Results should come out this week!!

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no results this week

Passed ny state

jbm3 said:

Passed ny state

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Congrats! What did you think of the exam? The AM and PM sections?

mnguy88 said:

Congrats! What did you think of the exam? The AM and PM sections?

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I felt pretty good about both. Onlynguessed on maybe 5 total. AM i felt really prepared for. I’d recommend school of PE

Pass rates just posted! Only a 44% overall passing rate for Construction! Congrats to all who passed and to those that didn’t, most of you are not alone!

mnguy88 said:

Pass rates just posted! Only a 44% overall passing rate for Construction! Congrats to all who passed and to those that didn’t, most of you are not alone!

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That’s nuts Construction was so low. I thought the historic passing rages were the reverse order by discipline of this exam 

Anyone have any idea why construction was the lowest?