I absolutely hate that about this exam. They don't tell us a damn thing about grading. And for us that aren't perfect at every test we take, being able to come up with a strategy is important. Mine turned into screw wood because it would be unethical for me to do anyway, as I have zero experience with it, and focus on what I know. I focused on concrete, steel, masonry, and analysis and did them completely. So I didn't fudge anything, I made sure it was correct and well explained. If you are struggling like me to pass (which I did, yay!), maybe try a different approach. I can't do four of those problems in four hours, and I don't think you should rush through something you haven't seen before
To really answer why they won't tell us anything about grading, I'd posit we consider two principles. First, who does this procedure benefit? And second, Occam's razor.
At some point, someone sat in a room and said "we need to grade essay problems subjectively, but maintain a believable--albeit superficial--patina of objectivity." We do know that in the past, all licensing exams were constructed response (essay). Additionally, we know that more information was provided on grading and errors as well. So what lead to the change?
NCEES procedure manuals state that this was done for the purposes of exam security. This is their most important (stated) goal. However, if exam security were the only, or actual reason, you would see a marked
positive difference in the pass rate between first time takers and repeat takers. Seeing one administration of the exam would theoretically give you an unfair advantage when retaking, and, NCEES might limit examinees to a maximum number of attempts to maintain this illusion. But based on the metrics and passing rate data provided by NCEES, we know this isn't the case--seeing exam content in and of itself does
not increase your chance of passing. Therefore the purposeful obfuscation on the essay grading must serve some higher purpose...otherwise it wouldn't be in place. The simplest explanation appears to be that the trick to the test
isn't necessarily the exam content, but rather the grading procedures themselves. So now the real question: whom does this procedure benefit?
The public as a whole clearly is benefited by competent engineers. However, if the public were intended to be the main beneficiary, NCEES would be in the business of promoting that examinees previously deemed "incompetent" could improve and become competent. The simplest way to achieve this would be to provide grading information to licensure candidates, likely bound by NDAs similar to those signed prior to taking the test. But NCEES does not and would not risk taking this step. Why? The grading data must thusly be considered sacrosanct in a way that goes above and beyond how the exam content is classified. There must be proprietary methods which are applied generally to all essay problems; NCEES is concerned that being aware of those methods--more than the types of problems themselves--would skew pass rates to a point that continued exam administration would be unsustainable. The procedure in place clearly is not beneficial to the examinee in any way, and likely does more harm than good.
NCEES understands that providing a vague diagnostic doesn't raise your chances of passing the next time around. That, in my estimation, says volumes.