October 2018

Med610 said:

Which one did you take? Transpo? Or structures? 

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bingcrosbyb said:

EE - Power. "You sunk my battleship."

Preparation Time/Materials: 250 total hours. 5 textbooks, prep coursework notebook, 2 notebooks of graduate class material, calculators, snacks, rolling suitcase.

Money: ~$1,550.

General Observations: Arrived at my site 30 minutes prior to report time. Noticed that many others had literally libraries and libraries of books. Someone had a giant wagon with bungie cords holding all of the books together. Others just had a single piece of paper. Wild. I randomly started thinking of a national geographic special with narration by Morgan Freeman on PE test taking habits. I needed that laugh to clear my head.

AM Session: Felt the AM session was great. Only ended up with 6-7 that I didn't have a single solid answer or couldn't find it in my reference. I finished slightly early and checked only some of my work.

PM Session: Total unadulterated bloodbath. Couldn't seem to concentrate enough to find the equations I needed. Calculator was spitting out answers that were out of this world. Saw stuff that I barely covered in droves. About 2-3 hours into the afternoon, my brain felt like it had been through a dishwasher and I started hopping around from question to question. Not good. I will be lucky if I got a quarter to half right. I might as well have taken another discipline in the afternoon or gone to work. A monkey may have been able to do better.

Final Thoughts: As I left the exam area, I felt numb, dumb, and a little crushed. I felt like I blew the morning session out of the water. Then the PE got off a torpedo as I was heading to collect my stamp, promotion, and better life. I'm not very good at guessing and doing the math in my head all weekend I kept envisioning a percentage score in the upper 60s with an afternoon diagnostic that simply says "monkey". 6 months of neglecting my wife and family might be for nothing in the end except doing it all over again. I know the pass rate for repeaters is low, but what is the divorce rate?

Oh well. If I recall from a coworker, last years results were released in around 45-50 days following the exam. I think he got his in late May. We shall see. I guess the ultimate decision is now do I crack open another book....or another beer?

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leggo PE said:

All would have the same morning section...

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CanadianRebel said:

I thought the morning section was much harder than the NCEES Practice Exam.  I studied for about a month or so for the morning section before taking the Practice Exam.  Based on my results for that practice test, I decided to spend the last 2 months on the afternoon section because I thought I could just look what I didn't know up in the CERM and be fine.  The actual morning section had questions that I'm pretty sure weren't even in the CERM.  I remember finding information on one question in a college textbook I randomly decided to bring with me, but unfortunately I didn't have the time to learn how to do it.  Even if I had put more study time into the morning section, I never would have even thought to cover that topic.  There were more questions than I would have preferred that left me similarly frustrated.  It's crazy to me how few questions I actually remember though.  I cannot remember many easy questions, but hopefully it has something to do with time spent beating my head against the desk!

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LyceeFruit said:

No. Why would my Power AM be identical to a Transpo AM?

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LyceeFruit said:

No. Why would my Power AM be identical to a Transpo AM?

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