April 2019 MDM Preparation

I am taking MDM on April 2019. Please share your thoughts on preparation. I am taking this second time. 

I am taking it in April as well.  This will be my third attempt.  I took it in Oct '17 and April '18.  Scored 48/80 and 45/80.  It was pretty frustrating to say the least because I left the exam feeling I did better than that.  I took the School of PE review courses but am now doing the Dr Tom course to change things up.  I really like the DTC material and have already come across some things that would have helped on previous attempts.  I am hoping this is what gets me through it this time around.  If you are looking for a review course I would recommend DTC. 

All we can do is hang in there and keep at it.  There is a lot of good preparation and success stories here and I am sure there will be more with the recent release of scores.  I plan on seeing what worked for everyone else and see if that is something for me.  

Good luck with your studies and preparation.  

Castaway81 said:

I am taking it in April as well.  This will be my third attempt.  I took it in Oct '17 and April '18.  Scored 48/80 and 45/80.  It was pretty frustrating to say the least because I left the exam feeling I did better than that.  I took the School of PE review courses but am now doing the Dr Tom course to change things up.  I really like the DTC material and have already come across some things that would have helped on previous attempts.  I am hoping this is what gets me through it this time around.  If you are looking for a review course I would recommend DTC. 

All we can do is hang in there and keep at it.  There is a lot of good preparation and success stories here and I am sure there will be more with the recent release of scores.  I plan on seeing what worked for everyone else and see if that is something for me.  

Good luck with your studies and preparation.  

Click to expand...

Thank you. I am thinking of taking DTC. I watched his free videos and he is good. Any difference between April and Oct exams, in terms of difficulty? 

I thought the material in the exams was pretty similar as far a difficulty.  There were probably one or two problems each time that I don't think I covered at all during my review but I expected that might happen.  I think my biggest issue was falling into the traps because I came up with an answer for almost all of the problems.  Stuff like using diameter when they asked for radius or missing a stress calculation.  

Everyone says to do as many problems as possible and I think they are right.  My first two attempts I didn't work as many as I should have.  

For those taking the MDM exam in April 2019, I published a write-up after I passed the exam on my first try in 2018.



Also, I wanted to sell some of my practice exams. If you buy my practice exams, I am offering to work with you on binder preparations, priority exam references, practice exam solutions and more. Looking forward to the lucky person. Good luck towards April 2019.

I admire all those that put so much effort into preparations for the exams, like emmajuwa.  I have started to wonder, however, if this causes some people to suffer from exam anxiety.

To encourage people that it is possible to pass when they have limited time and resources, I'll describe my own preparations for the October 2018 MDM exam (passed taking the test for the first time).   (I recognize that some will find my approach to be a recipe for disaster for their own particular work habits.)

My own preparations were much more modest than those described by emmajuwa.  The only practice exam that I used was the NCEES MDM practice exam, which I worked through in two afternoons when work slowed down; my boss and I also spent about four hours reviewing the NCEES practice exam at the hotel bar the night before the exam.

I acquired no references other than what was in my personal library, mostly from my undergraduate studies.  I think that familiarity with the references is more important than the particular references used.  I did no tabbing of my reference materials, relying instead on the indices.  The references that I used in the exam were Fundamentals of Machine Elements (Hamrock et. al.), Mechanics of Materials (Beer and Johnston), Dynamics (Beer and Johnston), Mechanical Vibrations (Rao), Mark's Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, Materials Science and Engineering (Callister), the FE Reference Handbook, and the NCEES practice exam.

I did have to acquire a new calculator for the exam (HP 35s) as my preferred calculator (HP 48G/GX) is prohibited by NCEES.  I got familiar with the workings of the calculator by reading the entire manual and using it in my day-to-day work on an on-again-off-again basis for several months.

Exam preparation immediately before the exam consisted of picking up spare calculator batteries the night before and packing my reference materials the morning before having to depart to the exam site.  (Due to geography, my boss and I drove up the day before the exam and stayed in the same hotel in which the exam was being offered).

I found that I had plenty of time to feel comfortable for both the morning and afternoon sessions.  I had time to work all the problems, and rework the three problems that caused me frustration in the afternoon session, after fatigue had started to set in.  Generally, I worked the problems in the order that they appeared, moving on only if I didn't arrive at one of the possible answers on the first try.  I adopted this strategy as I didn't want to keep track of what I had already completed and what remained to be completed.

Without a diagnostic report I can't be sure of what score I actually achieved, but it was sufficient to pass.  I came up with what I felt were reasonable answers to every question, i.e., I matched one of the possible answers using, to me, some rational basis.  In retrospect, I would have reviewed corrosion more carefully before taking the exam.

My advice to future test takers is to have confidence in yourself.  Stay calm and try not to get flustered if you get stumped by a problem; move on and cycle back.

Know the exam specifications and your reference materials.  Use the NCEES practice exam to become familiar with how the questions/possible answers are going to presented.  The NCESS practice exam is going to be near useless to know precisely what material will be examined.

I found, based on the exam that I wrote, that the questions examined breadth more than depth.  I didn't find that any of the questions were set up to be deliberately tricky, but did require paying attention to the details and being careful in the calculations/units.  (This is made more difficult by the practice of NCEES presenting possible answers that were derived using common mistakes.)  The 8 hours is a marathon session, that requires endurance and focus.

Good luck to all with their preparations for the MDM exam in April 2019.

I recently passed the October 2018 exam on my first attempt after being out of school for 8 years. I will describe what worked for me below per advice of another engineer that had recently passed.

I started going through the NCEES practice test problem by problem. For each problem, I would find the corresponding section in BOTH textbook and MDM manual. I would make sure I had an excellent understanding of the concepts, and write down the important, bold equations and more importantly made sure I had an understanding of what these equations meant and how to use them as well as pertinent text notes. I would also tab the books at this time. If I could do it all over again, I would have started with other practice tests of similar or slightly higher difficulty and saved the NCEES test for last, because that is supposedly very similar in difficulty to the real test.

I then looked at any subjects that the NCEES test didn't touch, that I thought were basic, common, and useful that they might test me on, and studied these.

I COMPLETELY IGNORED sections like reliability equations, fracture mechanics, surface fatigue, gear tooth stress analysis, AGMA methods, planetary motion, moving reference frames and LIGHTLY STUDIED things like trusses, cables, and vector equations. I also IGNORED engineering economics and ethics, knowing that I would just skip these questions if they came up and try to look them up at the end.

I also reviewed the "Plant Engineering" section of MDM and tabbed a lot of it, but didn't necessarily go in depth studying, figuring I would look for the answer in the exam if one of these came up.

I FOCUSED HIGHLY on material properties, stress/strain/fatigue calculations, body/projectile motion, friction, equilibrium equations (summing moments/forces), bolts/pins/keys, machine elements (springs, gears, brakes, belts, chains), normal distributions/std deviations. quality assurance (Cpk, Ppk, timeline mapping, quality charts).

I already had a GOOD understanding of GDT, tolerancing, and machining/inspection from industry, but I would have studied these a to reasonable depth as well if I didn't know about them already.

The exam tests breadth more so than depth of knowledge as the previous poster said. So know the basics of almost every section in the BIG THREE (shigley, statics, dynamics).

After finishing the test and all my studying, I literally went through and re-wrote all of my notes and equations and tabbed my notebook. This step was the most important for me because it helped me realize which subjects I needed to look at a little more in depth and allowed me to consolidate everything in a concise, easy to read/access format for the test. I also made notes on the units to use for the equations. UNITS ARE CRITICAL! Spend a lot of time making sure you are using the correct units with the equations and for God's sake get the "Engineering Unit Conversions" book. It is a life saver and a necessity during the test.

Finally, I simulated test day and re-took the NCEES practice test in two separate 4 hour sessions. If I could do it all over again, I would have used other practice tests for studying and took the NCEES test last. I had my wife grade the test, looked at my mistakes, and noted any common pitfalls in my notes in the relevant section so I didn't make the same mistake on test day (mostly all of them were units).

Reference Materials I Brought: Shigley Mechanical Design, Statics textbook, Dynamics Textbook, Engineering Unit Conversions, NCEES Practice Exam, MDM manual, and my notes

I wish I had time to do more practice problems, but all I did was the NCEES test. If I failed, I would have focused on problems, problems, problems. All in all, I probably did a little over 200 hours of self-studying in 2 months with no classes taken.

I hope this helped.

Taking it in April 2019, for the second time. Failed Oct 2018 (MDM). I got a (Texas) score of 64 (raw score of 44/80). Not overly discouraged. considering my circumstances. I graduated 25yrs ago! FEA software didn't exist (an university level anyway, PC's weren't used (they were very expensive and way out of reach for a student!) I wrote my thesis on an electric typewriter.  Anyway, I did lots of self study (only) (did not do any online, taught review courses) probably 300hrs, thought I had done enough practice problems (I did the 20111, 2016 NCEES practice problems several times, PPI's problems (the ones that were doable in under 10 mins!) and the Engproguides study material questions and Engproguide practice exam questions (though these weren't hard enough in retrospect). Read the latest  MERM, Shigleys, read (several times) the Engproguide study material which I found by far the most useful for getting me back up to speed on theory I had long since not used at it's rawest level if you see what i mean. If more NCEES practice questions were available then i think i woulda passed. At least now I have a good  feel for the nature of the exam questions, what they look like. I have a much better idea of what to practice on, which brings me to my next question...

 a recommendation  - for a online review course (live, on demand, classroom), even private tutoring maybe? (I'm in Houston, TX)

I have to pass - I need to make a career change (even at this late stage in my career) away from Offshore (Deepwater) Oil&Gas (which basically there are no future projects that I would play a part in sadly). So a PE license would open a few different doors, fingers crossed.

Can you post your diagnostics?  I think that will help the forum give you better advice.  Thanks. 

@Subsea