I took Construction in NJ and thought that the exam was fair.
AM - Guessed on 4 at the end and realized that 2 of my 4 guesses were correct, which puts me at a 38/40. Conservatively, I'll hope for a 35/40 accounting for mistakes
PM - Took about 25 minutes to read through all 40-questions and rank easy, medium or hard, write the units next to the multiple choices so I did not forget and also underline any key information or write equations for the ones that I was sure of. Did my first pass and very confidently had 17/40. I already felt solid at this point figuring even if I were to guess the rest of the exam I could still have a pass in the bag, that's when an amazing thing started to happen.
After each successive pass that I made, problems that I had originally ranked as being more difficult than easy were easy after I was able to eliminate the distractor information. Some problems I even ranked very difficult and I came to discover they were loaded with distractors and really only required one to two step algebraic solutions as long as you could see past the smoke & mirrors. I believe I was very confident on 26/40 of the PM Construction questions and made semi-guesses 8/40 and blind guesses on 6/40
Halfway through the PM exam I had a moment where I remembered thinking to myself, "I'm actually going to be a PE....this is actually happening". Walking out of the exam I was trying to hold back from smiling because I did not want to be over confident or make others feel bad. I definitely felt like I was in the minority of examinees being as confident as I was walking out.
My Strategy:
I purchased every depth reference and study book and sample exams 6-months out while I was working on my application and researching the exam. I used learncivilengineering.com and acethepeexam.com to get a grasp on what the test was about and learn strategies. In July I studied only construction depth studying for 2-months lightly (about 20-hrs/week) and then went on a 2-week vacation to the southwest where I did nothing. When I got back from vacation, I started School of PE onsite courses. I also had the online lectures ordered so I would review the lecture after the weekend course and do only that weekends topic the following week. I was pretty religious about going to the library to study after work. I'm a runner and I actually stopped running for 3-months to study for this exam. The mindset was that if I had running goals they would take away time from my most important goal, which was getting the "One and Done" on the PE Exam.
After school of PE courses were over the next two-weeks were 65% construction/depth and 35% breadth topics, with only one simulated 4-hour depth exam session during that final week off. The final week off saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday and wednesday were hardcore 12-15 hour days at a local community college library with a friend I met at school of pe who was also doing construction depth. Without this friend, I never would have attained the knowledge and confidence that I had walking in on exam day. We were able to use eachothers strengths and weaknesses to maximize study time and LEARN.
So now I'm really sweating this just wanting to know officially. My gut after I walked out of the exam was telling me that, "I'd be really really really surprised if I did not pass".....