"the other board" Exam Cafe

Has anyway signed up to use the "the other board" Exam Cafe? If so, was it worth the money? (Civil Discipline)

I used it when I was studying. It was a good way to do a timed practice exam because it put it together for you. Plus I liked how it had qualitative questions to practice as well.

I found the questions to be harder than the exam but I think it's good to work harder questions because it makes you faster on the exam.

For how inexpensive it is I think it's worth it.

Just my :2cents:

Good luck!

spidershawn said:

Has anyway signed up to use the "the other board" Exam Cafe? If so, was it worth the money? (Civil Discipline)

Click to expand...

I hated it and thought it was a waste of the thirty-some-odd bucks I spent for it. I took the structural afternoon; some of the example problems on the "cafe" were ridiculously more difficult than what appeared on the test. Sure, in these cases I learned from working the problems, but it did nothing for my PE studying. Also, I didn't find the solutions particularly helpful. Finally, it tied me to a location with internet for using it to study, which, obviously, is something I should have considered before buying it. The only positives I have for it is that it does have the timed exam feature and it did add a few more problems to my mix. However, I don't feel that it prepared me any further than the example problem companion book to the CERM, the CERM itself, six-minute solutions (which I had a bit of an issue with all the mistakes in the edition I had) and the NCEES example test. Now, that's just my opinion for the structural bit... I don't know if it was more beneficial to other disciplines.

I am taking a review course and with it came the 60 day access to the Cafe. I don't think having additional practice problems could ever be bad, especially when some are qualitative which outside the Sample Exams are difficult to come by. My only complaint is that many of the problems are way too involved with some taking 20-30 minutes to solve...but that is more a general complaint about all of their material.

BPCW said:

My only complaint is that many of the problems are way too involved with some taking 20-30 minutes to solve...but that is more a general complaint about all of their material.

Click to expand...

Yeah, and I guess that's my chief complaint with it. Yes, doing questions that are somewhat more difficult than what's on the test are beneficial, as long as they are within the same realm of the questions on the test that you're studying for. However, solving structural problems that are indeterminate to the 3rd degree or requiring 6x6 matrices to solve are well beyond the scope of the Structural Afternoon. Sure, you learn a lot from these problems, but they are also a waste of your time when studying for the exam. I was looking for problems that would help me succeed on the test.

Were there questions in the cafe that were down at the level of the exam? Yes; so if you're looking for a place to get some additional problems and you've already gone through 6 minute solutions (which also had some problems that were more difficult than necessary, but not to the excessive point that the cafe was), the CERM example problem companion book, the NCEES sample test, and (if you're taking the structural afternoon) the NDS example problem book, then consider using it. Just consider the reasonableness of some of the questions presented.

Now, also note that I used this thing in March ahead of the April 08 exam. It's internet-based, so it's very possible that they changed and updated it, particularly since the codes changed (it wasn't updated before April, but neither was the CERM).

I didn't like the format for the timed exams. I would get 10 very similar problems in a role followed by another group of very similar problems. I couldn't get a balanced sample exam.