2016 results

[Ken PE 3.1]

I'm in full blown panic mode right now.  Hope the cut score favors those of us that had a questionable PM session.

If you are panicking now, you are in for a loooooong wait. Deep breaths and lots of whiskey!

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk

 

[knight1fox3]

In regards to the cut score, I heard if you signed your name on your answer sheet you automatically receive 20 points.

Cut score is probably going to be very, very high. Very.

Yes, but keep in mind this is a weighted average based on the specific discipline of exam one took.

 

[KRF_PDX]

Chiming in as another engineer that had a miserable experience in October with the Mechanical exam, but I feel a million times better about my performance this go around. Not even concerned at all about what the result is going to say, which is a huge relief after literally spending the past year studying for this thing.

I'm not sure if April was slightly easier than October, or if I was just that much better prepared this go around, but I'm going to go ahead and say the latter for my own ego... 

 

[jnuengr]

Chiming in as another engineer that had a miserable experience in October with the Mechanical exam, but I feel a million times better about my performance this go around. Not even concerned at all about what the result is going to say, which is a huge relief after literally spending the past year studying for this thing.

I'm not sure if April was slightly easier than October, or if I was just that much better prepared this go around,

This is exactly my experience. Almost one year of studying. I have no idea what hobbies or interests I had before this exam. I think we will pass... for now, we wait.

 

[guiman]

Echoing others... AM was easy. It also felt very geotech heavy from what I remember (seepage, hydraulic conductivity, soil pressure/bearing capacity, excavation support, soil mechanics etc...). I'm not complaining . I had loads of time left to do go over each problem again and luckily didn't confuse myself too much.

I took the Geotech PM. I wouldn't say it was hard. Some of the questions were straight forward and you could answer quickly, which gave you time for more difficult questions. Others looked like they were going to be lengthy so I skipped them. Then coming back to them, I realized they gave you a whole bunch of stuff I'd have to solve and it was just a one step problem using what they've given. But some of them were really tricky. Mostly the concept questions. There were a lot of concept questions. At times, you could cross out 2 of the 4 options but the last two had you staring at words for a bit before you could isolate the one word that makes the option invalid. 

In all, not bad.

I took the Geotech PM as well. For me, the AM was smooth. I went through the test in the first two hours and ended up solving about 30 questions. I marked the questions that I had doubts on, needed to look up in the reference,  and those that gave me the "hmm". Second round, I went back and redid the whole 30 questions, found out that they had tricks in two questions that totally lured me into the most seemed-right answers. Fixed those and moved on to the last 10. I got about 1 hour left after finishing all 40 questions and decided to leave when there was about 30m left.

PM was also good even though it was more conceptual than what I expected and definitely gave me more "hmm" than the AM portion. I would say there were about 15/40 questions that were not calculation-based. My first round running through gave me about 25 questions answered in 2 hours. Another hour and I knocked out 10-12 more. I spent the last hour staring at about 3 questions and kept going back and forth to correct the right answers. Overall, I think I did good. PM was more unpredictable since the questions were more conceptual but I believe I made some solid educated guesses on 3 hardest questions.

Final thoughts on AM and PM in general, the tests were very well prepared, not too easy not too hard. Lots of tricks that required you to read the questions carefully word by word. Lots of logical thinking, guessing and looking up in references  :B

A few things that worth pointing out thou. One of the test takers didn't have enough time to transfer her answers to the sheet. I guess she was solving problems and planned to go back and double check them or so. My fellow table mate was a nice guy but he had a bad habit of banging on the table with his right hand during the test. It was a little distracting although not a lot. Oh and quite a few folks complained about their Fitbits being confiscated during the test so say no to Fitbit.  :wacko:

 

[Clemson CE P.E.]

With the AM being easy this time around, I bet the cut score is going to be pretty high.

shut your mouth.

 

[matt267 PE]

 

[jnuengr]

Oh and quite a few folks complained about their Fitbits being confiscated during the test so say no to Fitbit.  :wacko:

One guy from our EET course was dismissed from the exam because of his fitbit! Not a mistake to make, I guess. I felt so bad for the guy.  

 

[knight1fox3]

One guy from our EET course was dismissed from the exam because of his fitbit! Not a mistake to make, I guess. I felt so bad for the guy.  

 

[DuckFlats]

Crap...I have already checked NCEES twice for my score. I think I'll become really good friends with Jonny Walker over the next couple months.

 

[knight1fox3]

Crap...I have already checked NCEES twice for my score. I think I'll become really good friends with Jonny Walker over the next couple months.

Win!  And come check out our Shoot the Breeze forum while you're waiting. :thumbs:

 

[cpp11]

Structural PM here.

Any of the other Structural PM takers feel that their time spent studying the PPI Structural Practice problems (Exam Cafe or otherwise) was kind of a waste of time?

 

[guiman]

Wow! At my test location, our proctors clearly mentioned Fitbits were not allowed before both AM and PM sessions. Folks that brought Fitbits to the test got them back at the end of the day but nobody was kicked out. Oh well, Andrew should have known better.

 

[choyos]

Structural PM here.

Any of the other Structural PM takers feel that their time spent studying the PPI Structural Practice problems (Exam Cafe or otherwise) was kind of a waste of time?

I thought the PM was very code heavy, more so than the last time I took it in October. I felt better this time around, the structural course I took with EET was very helpful. I felt they covered a lot of stuff that was in the pm portion. However I still thought it was a tough test, mainly because of how the questions were worded.

 

[gtplayb0y]

The AM went smoothly. I found the PM Transportation Exam to be heavy on traffic and conceptual based. I can only hope. This was my first time taking the exam, but I can say it was NOTHING like the PE Practice Exams put out by NCEES or anyone else!

 

[ngmakhlo_PE]

The AM went smoothly. I found the PM Transportation Exam to be heavy on traffic and conceptual based. I can only hope. This was my first time taking the exam, but I can say it was NOTHING like the PE Practice Exams put out by NCEES or anyone else!

I couldn't agree more! I am in the same boat, this was my first time taking it and I am losing my mind thinking back to the questions I may or may not have gotten right. I was SO confident after the morning section and then the afternoon section hit and I felt as if I was a frantic librarian flipping through every book I owned. I do not know how I could have prepared better for that. Maybe better tabs and callouts in my AASHTO and MUTCD? This long wait is going to kill me.

 

[jnuengr]

Any of the other Structural PM takers feel that their time spent studying the PPI Structural Practice problems (Exam Cafe or otherwise) was kind of a waste of time?

I'm not Structural, but I studied PPI materials for the October 2015 and found them to be completely disorganized, much too broad and generally useless. Needless to say, I failed in October. I took the EET prep course before April and it was night and day different. I couldn't have been more prepared.

 

[Structures]

Structural PM here.

Any of the other Structural PM takers feel that their time spent studying the PPI Structural Practice problems (Exam Cafe or otherwise) was kind of a waste of time?

I heard from the beginning to essentially ignore Lindeburg problems as they weren't very representative of what was on the actual exam.

With that said, I had a few things I was using to prepare for the afternoon and I'm not sure anything prepared me all that well.  It felt incredibly heavy on code-familiarity.

 

[scatsob]

In general aren't the PPI problems never representative of the actual test?  On the ME side that was the case but the PPI problems did a good job of forcing you to know the material you needed to solve that type of problem. I felt like it wasn't wasted time but it was frustrating sometimes because they were difficult problems. Made the ones on the test seem easy. Also, the mechanical practice test was a spot on representation of the PM session. To the point where the last two problems (in the same order) on both were just different ways of asking the same thing. It was a nice surprise.

 

[SE_FL]

Structural PM here.

Any of the other Structural PM takers feel that their time spent studying the PPI Structural Practice problems (Exam Cafe or otherwise) was kind of a waste of time?

Yes, Structural PM taker as well. The main problem I saw was that the Exam Cafe looks like it was set up with questions from before the SE exam existed. I noticed the SE Exam questions (realistic with a touch of theoretical) were very different than the PE Civil-Structural Exam questions (conceptual and theoretical). I also noticed older versions of the NCEES practice exam were a waste of time. Not only due to the reference changes for updated code but also the lack of bridge questions on the PE Civil-STR. NCEES gives updated "Exam specifications" for a reason, and the PPI questions do not take that into account. I think PPI is a great resource, but you can't reply on it as your only one.