# Why Six Minutes per Question is a Sham



## GregoryPE (Oct 27, 2016)

During my preparation for the PE exam (which I am taking in NYC tomorrow by the way), I found myself stressing a lot about not being able to solve questions in the 6 minute timeframe. The first time I did the Lindeburg HVAC practice exam, it took me an average of 20 minutes per question, and 2 solid days, and to be fair I spent a whole lot of time looking at the solutions to start me off in the right direction.

However, having taken the NCEES HVAC practice test, I found that there were multiple quick hitter questions, especially in the breadth section, which took me 30 seconds. So while my intention is to move as quickly as possible, I am not going to freak out if I get one of those questions where 6 minutes go by and I am still trying to figure out why my answer is not one of the choices (and probably orders of magnitude away from any answer choice!)

I guess I'm just saying to those studying, not to freak out about the 6 minutes, because I'm banking on the fact that with some of the low hanging fruit, that 6 minutes will actually be 30 seconds for some, 2 minutes for others, and 15 minutes for others.

And finally, I've decided, I'm guessing "B" when all else fails.

Good luck to my fellow test takers!


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## ruggercsc (Oct 27, 2016)

The NCEES practice exams are indicative of the type of questions that are on the exam.  Some will may take 30 seconds, some may take 30 minutes.  Pick the low hanging fruit, but read the question carefully.  

I took the Construction Depth and 2 hours into the afternoon portion of exam, I had picked the low hanging fruit and had completed 20 questions.  Then I started tackling the others. I ran out of time and had to guess on some, but still passed.  My advice is to pick the low hanging fruit first, but read the questions carefully and don't read too much into it. You don't want to miss an easy question because you misread it or assumed too much.

Lindeburg, Six Minute solutions, Civil Engineering Academy, etc. all had questions that had multiple steps with multiple equations.  There are a few of those those type of questions on the exam, but not an overwhelming amount.

You will be okay if:

1.  You are prepared

2.  You relax

3.  Pick the low hanging fruit first

4. Read the question carefully but do not read too much into.

Best of Luck to all exam takers.


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## starquest (Oct 27, 2016)

I took and passed the exam in April.  I wasn't so much focused on the 6 minute timeframe but you do 'know' when you are starting to take too long on a specific problem.   I found that I had two causes for 'taking too long'; 1) I felt I processed the problem correctly but didn't end up with one of the answers or 2) I was unsure how to initiate or assess the problem.  

For 1); after I drove to what I thought was the solution, I'd of course try to review my methodology and calculations.  As soon as I felt that I 'was taking too much time', I made an educated guess on the answer, filled in the circle in the answer key and marked my test booklet by simply circling the problem to come back to later on.   For 2); after trying to assess and initiate a problem for several minutes, I again got the gut feeling that I was 'taking too long'.  In this case, I again marked the problem in my test booklet but simply skipped it on the answer key.  Once finishing my first pass thru the exam, I immediately put my focus on the 2) situation problems leaving the 1) type as the least priority.  In the end, I was able to review all problems that I questioned at least once again.  For the 1) types that I did figure out my error on the second go around, I found that my educated guess was indeed correct in every case but 1! 

So I guess what I am saying is, when you get that gut feel on taking too much time, assess the problem and determine if you can make an educated guess or not.   If not, simply skip it and move on.  You will be much more comfortable coming back to it after finishing your first pass through...believe me.   Also trust your educated guesses, they are more educated than you think!  

Best of luck to all tomorrow!


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## ptatohed (Oct 27, 2016)

The 6 minutes per question is an average and is still relevant.  It can be used as a gauge as you move along on the test.  For instance, if 60 minutes have gone by, you better have more than 10 questions answered, especially when you should be hitting the sub-6 minute problems first.  After two hours, you should hopefully have more than 20 completed.  After three hours you should have close to 30 problems done, if not a few more.  In the 3rd and 4th hours, you'll be doing the more lengthy problems.  But do pay attention to time like starquest mentioned.  If you are putting in too much time on one problem, cut bait and move on.


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## CAPLS (Oct 27, 2016)

My guess is that the number of questions considered as "low hanging fruit" is directly related to how ready the individual is to become licensed.  Its all an individual perception.


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## TehMightyEngineer (Oct 30, 2016)

What ptatohed said; it's an average.


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## cupojoe PE PMP (Oct 31, 2016)

CAPLS said:


> My guess is that the number of questions considered as "low hanging fruit" is directly related to how ready the individual is to become licensed.  Its all an individual perception.


On my exam there were questions that were you either know this or you don't. References wouldn't help much. Then there were questions that required me to solve a problem. I divided questions up in four categories, based on the amount of time to solve. In the morning, I had so many questions in Groups 1 &amp; 2, that I had basically as much time as I could use on the rest. In the afternoon, I had only &lt;5 problems that fell into categories 1-2, a bunch in 3, and many in 4.

1. Questions I could answer on the spot without any calculation/references - Very low hanging fruit, these questions were basically free points.

2. Questions that I knew I could answer with some calculation or I needed to look up info (i.e. code references/tables)

3. Calculations that I knew I could do, but would take some time

4. Things that needed to be looked up and would take more time, and I may or may not be able to find in references.


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## ptatohed (Oct 31, 2016)

cupojoe PE PMP said:


> On my exam there were questions that were you either know this or you don't. References wouldn't help much. Then there were questions that required me to solve a problem. I divided questions up in four categories, based on the amount of time to solve. In the morning, I had so many questions in Groups 1 &amp; 2, that I had basically as much time as I could use on the rest. In the afternoon, I had only &lt;5 problems that fell into categories 1-2, a bunch in 3, and many in 4.
> 
> 1. Questions I could answer on the spot without any calculation/references - Very low hanging fruit, these questions were basically free points.
> 
> ...


Very excellent advice here.


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## KatyLied P.E. (Dec 4, 2016)

cupojoe PE PMP said:


> On my exam there were questions that were you either know this or you don't. References wouldn't help much. Then there were questions that required me to solve a problem. I divided questions up in four categories, based on the amount of time to solve. In the morning, I had so many questions in Groups 1 &amp; 2, that I had basically as much time as I could use on the rest. In the afternoon, I had only &lt;5 problems that fell into categories 1-2, a bunch in 3, and many in 4.
> 
> 1. Questions I could answer on the spot without any calculation/references - Very low hanging fruit, these questions were basically free points.
> 
> ...


Good point in particular about focusing one step on just code references/table type questions.  The Spinup sample test book for the Electrical PE - Power uses this same overall strategy.  Much more efficient use of your reference materials


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## KatyLied P.E. (Dec 4, 2016)

GregoryPE said:


> During my preparation for the PE exam (which I am taking in NYC tomorrow by the way), I found myself stressing a lot about not being able to solve questions in the 6 minute timeframe. The first time I did the Lindeburg HVAC practice exam, it took me an average of 20 minutes per question, and 2 solid days, and to be fair I spent a whole lot of time looking at the solutions to start me off in the right direction.
> 
> However, having taken the NCEES HVAC practice test, I found that there were multiple quick hitter questions, especially in the breadth section, which took me 30 seconds. So while my intention is to move as quickly as possible, I am not going to freak out if I get one of those questions where 6 minutes go by and I am still trying to figure out why my answer is not one of the choices (and probably orders of magnitude away from any answer choice!)
> 
> ...


My recommendation on how to answer your  guesses is do a  quick scan of all the other problems which you actually able to work and solve with any amount of certainty.  Whatever letter is most common use that as your "guess" answer.  No more of a risk than choosing B and, for what it's worth, at least uses some type of logic.


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## DanKL (Dec 6, 2016)

Totally agree with you, Katy


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## cupojoe PE PMP (Dec 6, 2016)

I totally agree with you, DanKL, agreeing with Katy, agreeing with me.


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## RickJames (Dec 7, 2016)

KatyLied P.E. said:


> My recommendation on how to answer your  guesses is do a  quick scan of all the other problems which you actually able to work and solve with any amount of certainty.  Whatever letter is most common use that as your "guess" answer.  No more of a risk than choosing B and, for what it's worth, at least uses some type of logic.


Had about 4 didnt get back to in the AM.

i went with least common answer for column instead...we shall see what happened.


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## ruggercsc (Dec 7, 2016)

I have posted previously that NCEES tries to to have an equal distribution of answers.  The theory being that they do not  want someone getting a statistical advantage by guessing one particular answer (B for example).  I read this on another site.


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## ptatohed (Dec 7, 2016)

I have a little theory that I have never shared.  And don't ask me to explain but here it is:  If it is a quantitative problem, guess B or C.  If it is a non-quantitative problem, guess A or D. 

Try it.  Take a practice exam and answer based solely on this theory.  If I am right, you should get better than 25%.


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## matt267 PE (Dec 7, 2016)




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## ruggercsc (Dec 7, 2016)

ptatohed said:


> I have a little theory that I have never shared.  And don't ask me to explain but here it is:  If it is a quantitative problem, guess B or C.  If it is a non-quantitative problem, guess A or D.
> 
> Try it.  Take a practice exam and answer based solely on this theory.  If I am right, you should get better than 25%.


But did you have an equal distribution of B's and C's for the qualitative problems and A's and D's for the quantitative problems.


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## RickJames (Jun 15, 2017)

ruggercsc said:


> I have posted previously that NCEES tries to to have an equal distribution of answers.  The theory being that they do not  want someone getting a statistical advantage by guessing one particular answer (B for example).  I read this on another site.


I thought this would be the case but exactly opposite occured on my Oct 2016 exam.

After i was done, double checked sheet and the answer distribution was WAYYYYY off.  If i recall correctly, it was to the tune of 60%-70% were C.  I've never seen it this bad on a scantron...got to the point i was looking at problems to check if I read them wrong/missed a step and try to avoid C.

For my handful of guesses, I attempted to even out the distribution and went all B but sheet was still severly unbalanced and highly illogical.  Passed without difficulty but it was odd. Dont remember that from previous 2 attempts.


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## JHW 3d (Jun 15, 2017)

RickJames said:


> > On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 10:22 AM, ruggercsc said: I have posted previously that NCEES tries to to have an equal distribution of answers.  The theory being that they do not  want someone getting a statistical advantage by guessing one particular answer (B for example).  I read this on another site.
> 
> 
> I thought this would be the case but exactly opposite occured on my Oct 2016 exam.After i was done, double checked sheet and the answer distribution was WAYYYYY off.  If i recall correctly, it was to the tune of 60%-70% were C.  I've never seen it this bad on a scantron...got to the point i was looking at problems to check if I read them wrong/missed a step and try to avoid C.
> ...


Did you get a score? Maybe you barely passed.

I observed an equal distribution on MS&amp;M Oct 2015.


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## RickJames (Jun 16, 2017)

JHW 3d said:


> Did you get a score? Maybe you barely passed.
> 
> I observed an equal distribution on MS&amp;M Oct 2015.


Ha no score.  My previous fails were 50/51. 

This time took a class plus found a great one stop ref ...id say i was at least high 60s. 

Had time to review many of the Cs...they werent wags, they were calcs or code i had worked out.

Total 4 wags in AM, 2 in pm


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## gpoli111 (Jun 16, 2017)

I personally feel like scanning through the questions is a waste of precious time. I prefer to try all of the questions skipping only those I know will be a real struggle or guess, that'd be about 5 per session. If it's an easy question you can answer it whether it's question 40 and you went in order or as if you thumbed through all of them first. Why read the questions and put thought into the difficulty when you may 1/3 and have to come back later and start all over again? I had over an hour/45 min. morning/afternoon respectively to go back to those 5 or so hard questions/guesses.


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## ptatohed (Jun 18, 2017)

gpoli111 said:


> I personally feel like scanning through the questions is a waste of precious time. I prefer to try all of the questions skipping only those I know will be a real struggle or guess, that'd be about 5 per session. If it's an easy question you can answer it whether it's question 40 and you went in order or as if you thumbed through all of them first. Why read the questions and put thought into the difficulty when you may 1/3 and have to come back later and start all over again? I had over an hour/45 min. morning/afternoon respectively to go back to those 5 or so hard questions/guesses.


First scanning questions, ranking them by order of difficulty, and then working them in that order of difficulty is a must if you are like me and you aren't going to get to all 40 in 4 hours.  So, yeah, someone like you who knows for certain they will be able to attempt all 40 well within the 4 hour limit, has no reason to rank.  But in every single exam I took (FE, 8hr, CA Survey, CA Seismic), I never completed all questions and had to guess near the end.  So, scanning and ranking was a must for me.  It was the difference between getting to, say, 36 problems instead of, say, 30 problems.


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## BigWheel (Jun 18, 2017)

I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well. 

Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:

First Pass: low-hanging fruit - requires little to no time/effort to answer. Generally less than 30 seconds invested.

Second Pass: all code-related questions. I thought this was especially helpful, as it is a very efficient use of references and time. For me, because I'm pretty familiar with my codes, generally a minute or two invested.

Third Pass: if calculation required, problems I knew I could set up, process, and solve with just a minute's worth of reference material "look-up" effort involved; 3-4 minutes invested. If conceptual, problems I knew I could locate related information across multiple references and make an informed choice; limited myself to the 6 minute average.

Fourth Pass: entirely calculation-based problems I identified as my weak subject(s), which would require a substantial amount of research and reference to at least attempt to solve, but may wind up having to guess if I run out of time. When I got here, I figured up the number of minutes I had left and divided them by the number of questions I marked with a "4" and that was my budget. Morning session left me with 5 questions in this category with about an hour left. My afternoon session left me with 8 questions and about 30 minutes left.

i wound up with one question out of the 80 (the last one I answered) that was a WAG and two others that I SWAGed.


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## ptatohed (Jun 18, 2017)

BigWheel said:


> I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well.
> 
> Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:
> 
> ...


I guess that would work but it seems a tad too complicated to me.  I simply did a first pass where I did three things:  One, like you said, work the low hanging fruit; two, go ahead and guess now on the ones you think are probably 'impossible' for you (for me, this was any environmental question!  Even some structural questions.); and three, rank on your scantron the difficulty of the remaining "middle" questions (use 1, 2, 3 or symbols to identify as easy (least time required), medium, hard (most time required).  Don't use A, B, C as it may mess you up with your answers).  2nd pass work the 1s, 3rd pass work the 2s, 4th pass worth the 3s.  If you have leftover time, go back and look at the 'impossible' ones you previously guessed on (I never had time to do that though).


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## BigWheel (Jun 19, 2017)

ptatohed said:


> I guess that would work but it seems a tad too complicated to me.  I simply did a first pass where I did three things:  One, like you said, work the low hanging fruit; two, go ahead and guess now on the ones you think are probably 'impossible' for you (for me, this was any environmental question!  Even some structural questions.); and three, rank on your scantron the difficulty of the remaining "middle" questions (use 1, 2, 3 or symbols to identify as easy (least time required), medium, hard (most time required).  Don't use A, B, C as it may mess you up with your answers).  2nd pass work the 1s, 3rd pass work the 2s, 4th pass worth the 3s.  If you have leftover time, go back and look at the 'impossible' ones you previously guessed on (I never had time to do that though).


Sounds like we did the same thing, but worded it differently.


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## BigWheel (Jun 19, 2017)

The other benefit of ranking (for me, anyway) was I didn't work problems sequentially. I skipped around, so having problems ranked on the scantron allowed me to quickly identify what the "next" problem is.


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## KatyLied P.E. (Jun 19, 2017)

BigWheel said:


> I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well.
> 
> Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:
> 
> ...


lusone:   Amen brother!  I used that strategy and recommend it to anyone who asks.


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## ptatohed (Jun 19, 2017)

BigWheel said:


> The other benefit of ranking (for me, anyway) was I didn't work problems sequentially. I skipped around, so having problems ranked on the scantron allowed me to quickly identify what the "next" problem is.


But, to play Devil's Advocate, if you worked them sequentially, you'd also know what the next problem is.  "n+1".


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## BigWheel (Jun 19, 2017)

ptatohed said:


> But, to play Devil's Advocate, if you worked them sequentially, you'd also know what the next problem is.  "n+1".


Ha! I suppose you're right.

I had this one problem that I could not figure out how to set up to save my life. It seemed like I had everything I needed to get to work, except I was missing a key variable. No matter how many different approaches I tried, I would be missing yet another key variable. Frustrated, I skipped it and worked a couple of other problems.

When I finished one particular problem, it occurred to me that I could solve that frustrating one using the same approach I just used...all I needed to do was adjust the approach just slightly to make it work with my given parameters. When I got to the end, I couldn't believe that I didn't see it sooner. It was so obvious once I saw it. It really was a very clever problem.

Anyhow - I'm not sure if I would have ever seen the solution without having skipped it for a minute and work some different problems to get out of the rut.


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## Dexman PE PMP (Jun 20, 2017)

cupojoe PE PMP said:


> On my exam there were questions that were you either know this or you don't. References wouldn't help much. Then there were questions that required me to solve a problem. I divided questions up in four categories, based on the amount of time to solve. In the morning, I had so many questions in Groups 1 &amp; 2, that I had basically as much time as I could use on the rest. In the afternoon, I had only &lt;5 problems that fell into categories 1-2, a bunch in 3, and many in 4.
> 
> 1. Questions I could answer on the spot without any calculation/references - Very low hanging fruit, these questions were basically free points.
> 
> ...


My approach was very similar to this, but was slightly modified.

I started every question, in order. If it fell in any of the first 3 categories, I did it on the spot. I could look it up quickly, my mind was already on it, so why not finish it. 

If I started working on it and I discovered it was more of a category 4 (taking too long to solve), I would write down my thought process and proceed to the next question.  I even had a couple Category 5's in the afternoon: "WTF is this?"  Read the question, had no idea what they were asking and/or how to solve it, skipped it and moved on. If you do this, be sure to skip the answer line accordingly. I had to erase and re-fill a few questions because I didn't skip that problem on the answer sheet.

By skipping the Cat 5's, I often found that solving the other "low hanging fruit" provided insight to the ones I didn't know. I would then return to those skipped problems and try to apply my new concept. One of them I was able to "reverse engineer" from the given answers.

Doing it this way, I had about an hour to spare in both AM and PM sessions to go back and tackle the 2-3 impossible questions. If I didn't have a clue after 15 additional minutes, I filled in a random letter and moved on.


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## BigWheel (Jun 20, 2017)

Dexman PE PMP said:


> ...I even had a couple Category 5's in the afternoon: "WTF is this?"...
> 
> (truncated)


Ha! Just a couple?! It felt like half of my afternoon session questions fell in the "WTF" category, which was not a Spin-Up category, but nicely summarizes my feelings about them. My last problem was definitely a WTF question.

When the proctor announced, "Five minutes left," I took the last 4 minutes to thumb through ALL of my references to find the answer. When I didn't find it, I made a WAG at one-minute left and lived with it...I literally killed the first bubble I looked at on the scantron...


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