# Just curious....



## Jennifer Price (Oct 13, 2007)

Has anyone ever heard of anyone making a 100 on the PE exam?


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## maryannette (Oct 13, 2007)

Never heard of it. Seems to me, as long as you get minimum passing grade and get the initials, "PE", anything more is overkill.


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## IlPadrino (Oct 14, 2007)

I'm pretty certain there are some people who have gotten all 80 questions correct. If someone can get a perfect score on the SATs then it seems reasonable someone would do so on what some might consider a more straight-forward exam.

A better question might be "What does a perfect score tell us about the person?"


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## benbo (Oct 14, 2007)

Probably a lot fewer people got 100% than claimed to get 100%.

Seriously, I believe there are people who are so smart and knowlegable in Electrical Engineering (my discpline) that they could probably get a 100% on any given day without much effort. The lady who taught my PE class at CSULA was like that. She just had a knack. I never saw anyone ask a question she couldn't answer easily, and believe me, people tried to stump her. I am sure she could have just walked in and gotten 100%.

Not me, I don't know my score but I'm sure I barely passed.


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## Rocco (Oct 14, 2007)

jenevans said:


> Has anyone ever heard of anyone making a 100 on the PE exam?


NCEES never reported my score, I just got a letter saying that I passed and that someday in the *distant* future, PA would mail me my license.

Does everyone else get a score report? Is it just a PA thing that they don't give us a numerical score?


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## maryannette (Oct 14, 2007)

NC gives no score. Just PE, and that's all I needed.


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## cement (Oct 14, 2007)

maryannette said:


> NC gives no score. Just PE, and that's all I needed.


That's right, we will never know now. but the test that I took required a combination of book learning and practical experience that would be hard to be "perfect" on in my opinion.


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## Dleg (Oct 14, 2007)

I get the impression that most state's have stopped reporting scores, and that all other states may follow suit in the near future.

I never found out what my score was. I'd like to know. But, I was talking with a contractor from the mainland the other day, a principal of a firm and a guy who I think is one of the best engineers I have ever met, and this issue came up. He said he got a 73 back when he became a PE. We were talking about test taking strategies, and he had said that he didn't even bother to study certain subjects (maybe structural?) because he didn't use it at work, and didn't need it to make the passing grade. So I guess the score really doesn't mean much when it comes to actual job performance or success.


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## Undertaker (Oct 14, 2007)

I got 69, or 0, for what it might matter. The result was the same F-A-I-L-E-D. I'll drink for that :beerchug:


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2007)

Dleg said:


> We were talking about test taking strategies, and he had said that he didn't even bother to study certain subjects (maybe structural?) because he didn't use it at work, and didn't need it to make the passing grade.


That's interesting because my previous supervisor took the exam when you were required to pick problems to work, worked them out by hand and had examiners grade your paper that included partial credit for problems. He too said the exam was designed in such a way that if you were not very knowledgable about an area (say structural) that you could still do well.

I do not believe that the exam works the same way today because of the breadth of problems that you are given. In fact, you have to know a little about everything on the exam in order to pass. I am not sure if that is better or worse ... I just know I didn't pass until I made an effort to study all of the subjects. :true:

JR


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## frazil (Oct 14, 2007)

I got 100.

Well they didn't actually report my score. But I counted all the answers I knew were correct and I'm 99.99% sure they were all right.


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## IlPadrino (Oct 15, 2007)

jregieng said:


> In fact, you have to know a little about everything on the exam in order to pass. I am not sure if that is better or worse ... I just know I didn't pass until I made an effort to study all of the subjects.


It seems to me that you could totally ignore a topic or two and still do OK. Considering each of the five major areas in the morning are worth 20% (just 10% of the overall), and some topics are totally absent in the depth, why not?


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## Guest (Oct 15, 2007)

^^^ Evaluating my scores from my previous exams on a STRICTLY emperical basis, I have reached that conclusion.

The second exam that I took, using the back-calculation feature I figured out that I had answered approximately 54 correct yet but managed to earn a numerical 69 score for the exam. When I look back on my results, the only thing that seemed amiss were my AM scores for Structural and Transportation - both &lt; 50% correct.

The conclusion I have drawn by my performance and glancing at others is that you MUST have a moderate showing on EACH of the AM subjects while showing strength in your proficiency areas. It seems to me that the PM subject has less bearing but again that is my view going strictly from the emperical results from my exams and casual review of others.

I will restate my position though for clarity. I think following the NCEES Specifications for the AM Section and preparing for some of the subjects listed there-in is necessary. I would not advocate studying/reviewing for EVERY specified subject within those areas that you are not proficient in but at least review materials to have some familiarity.

Examples:


I boned up on route geometrics and surveying - horizontal curves, vertical curves, stationing, bearings, etc. I spent the better part of a weekend making my own calculation sheets and working problems.
I also boned back up on beam Shear-Moment diagrams and deflection calculations. Spent the better part of a weekend + a few week days re-acquiating myself with those diagrams, force reactions, assumptions, and reading through those sections of the CERM about the underlying theory.
IMHO, taking two weeks to review problems and theory from specified topics in those to subject areas was one of the KEY reasons that brought me from failing to passing.
JR


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## RIP - VTEnviro (Oct 15, 2007)

frazil said:


> I got 100.
> Well they didn't actually report my score. But I counted all the answers I knew were correct and I'm 99.99% sure they were all right.



Tom?


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## MA_PE (Oct 15, 2007)

I know a couple of people that scored 70. Might as well have been 100. Neither of them applied for a retest to see if they could get a better score.


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## roadmonkey (Oct 15, 2007)

One of my PM's said he and his son got in the high 90's.

He added an interesting note that almost everyone he has seen fail got 69, figured that was as to not discourage people for trying a second time.


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## cement (Oct 15, 2007)

IlPadrino said:


> It seems to me that you could totally ignore a topic or two and still do OK. Considering each of the five major areas in the morning are worth 20% (just 10% of the overall), and some topics are totally absent in the depth, why not?


I work in highway construction, and took the afternoon transpo option. I took what some in my office call "the structural bypass" since it constituted only 10% of the exam, but had to be at least a third of the CERM, not to mention supplemental texts. Even without any structural studying, I know I got half the problems for sure, two of them I narrowed the guess to 50/50 and the other two I used my default letter.

It worked!


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## IlPadrino (Oct 16, 2007)

jregieng said:


> I will restate my position though for clarity. I think following the NCEES Specifications for the AM Section and preparing for some of the subjects listed there-in is necessary. I would not advocate studying/reviewing for EVERY specified subject within those areas that you are not proficient in but at least review materials to have some familiarity.


No arguments from me there...

When I consider the time I spent on beam diagrams (learning how to create them, not just understanding the diagrams I had), structural steel (how to use the tables I had), and traffic problems (beyond horizontal and vertical curves... superelevation, LOS, etc.), I think it might have been better spent on the "bread-and-butter" topics of my depth (Water Resources) such as hydrology that I didn't master. I can't complain (I passed with less than 100 hours total time invested in preparation) but I think some people may spend too much time mastering topics that are unlikely to help them much towards passing - at the detriment of preparing other topics.


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## bigray76 (Oct 16, 2007)

Cement said:


> I work in highway construction, and took the afternoon transpo option. I took what some in my office call "the structural bypass" since it constituted only 10% of the exam, but had to be at least a third of the CERM, not to mention supplemental texts. Even without any structural studying, I know I got half the problems for sure, two of them I narrowed the guess to 50/50 and the other two I used my default letter.
> It worked!


I took transpo PM as well and probably spent the least amount of time on structural of the 5 topics. I made sure I had my structural analysis book from college and I had copied all of the shear/moment diagrams out of the Manual of Steel Construction.... I did think the CERM had a nice set of diagrams as well. I figure I probably had about 5 or 6 of the questions on test day right and was able to eliminate two of the answers on a couple of the rest.

-Ray


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