I took the PE Civil Structural exam last week, currently awaiting my results (one more day...). I'm torn about how the test questions were set up. I also had a 41/39 split for the morning/afternoon. I had some morning questions that specifically said according to XXX code what would this number be? While they were "easier" if it was a "depth" question it would definitely not be a fair breadth question. I did the School of PE class and I thought it was a good prep class. The breadth they focus more on how to do examples, so some of the conceptual breadth questions can be difficult. All I can say for those are to know why/how the equations work (dimensional analysis was extremely helpful) and you should be good.
For the afternoon, I agree with the general sentiments about it being significantly harder than the morning but for me a lot of the troubles were navigating codes. I know my PDF codes very well, for work I have personal bookmarks I've made to navigate more easily but for practicing for the exam and School of PE review course I used a basic pdf with whatever bookmarks chapters are provided in a standard download from Techstreet (work subscription). My issue with this was the inconsistency between code setup during the exam. Some codes you can only bring up one chapter at a time, but with subsections bookmarked, other codes you can bring up the entire code but bookmarks are for the whole chapter. My main issue is this makes it inconsistent for searching/solving equations. If you can only bring up a chapter search and navigation is easy but if an equation or variable is referenced in another chapter you end up bouncing around for a while. (I suggest writing down your entire overall equation, and then write down if you need to go somewhere else what section, I bounced around for 4 mins on a question before I made this my default process). Fortunately if you switch between those popups you are brought back to the last page you had open, I cant remember if the page memory was reset every question or not.
If the window brought up the whole code your search starts from the beginning of the code and you end up trying to cross reference what page the chapter you need starts on and hopefully you can "filter" your results like that. If that code has different page numbers than what the search shows (some codes will use page numbers that restart every chapter/section etc) you're shooting in the dark for a while. I don't want to post a specific example, but for one problem I knew exactly which chapter and section I needed to go to, but it still took me 2 minutes to just manually scroll to that equation after I got to the correct chapter...
The only potential solution I have for this is if you are registered with NCEES they should give you a web portal or something where you can use the codes as they are going to be organized on your exam day. Exam is based on codes that are a few revisions older anyway.
This isn't to scare anyone about the exam, I'm just extremely particular about consistency so these things bothered me. Some tips for anyone taking a CBT PE exam, from someone who is an anxious mess (I've taken GMAT, PMP, and PE all at Pearson with similar experiences)
1) Ask the Pearsons proctor for 2 notepads. Mine said no problem and gave me 2. If they say no be nice and mention the exam is 8 hours with 1 scheduled break and 40 math based questions per block. Most staff will give you one so they don't have to switch it out in the middle of the exam for you.
2) Check your pen BEFORE you even go in the room, and check it well, draw long lines.
3) make the most of your "uncounted time" and don't just click start exam. When you go in you have up to 8 minutes for a CBT tutorial. Use this time to set up your space. I set my cough drops (individually unwrapped in a clear ziplock bag), eye drops (those rooms are dry as hell), put in earplugs, put my pad, pen, keyboard, and mouse where I wanted them and put my locker key and ID somewhere out of the way. After your lunch break you may have a bit of time to redo your setup.
4) a lot of people talk about 6 minutes per problem, but that makes for messy numbers. I tried to track 5 problems, 30 minutes. If I had to redo the exam i'd do 5 problems in 20-25 minutes morning and leave myself at least 4.5 hours for the afternoon. Afternoon try for the 5/30 which should leave you some time to review your flags.
5) Speaking of flags, at the very least you should put down your best guess on a flagged questions. Don't leave anything blank in case you don't have enough time to come back.
6) This is not a "real world design" exam, don't bring in your work shortcuts or methods. This is minimum competencies measured across the country. So it's really more of an academic test. This was harder for me since I graduated college 10 years ago.
EDIT
I passed!
For the afternoon, I agree with the general sentiments about it being significantly harder than the morning but for me a lot of the troubles were navigating codes. I know my PDF codes very well, for work I have personal bookmarks I've made to navigate more easily but for practicing for the exam and School of PE review course I used a basic pdf with whatever bookmarks chapters are provided in a standard download from Techstreet (work subscription). My issue with this was the inconsistency between code setup during the exam. Some codes you can only bring up one chapter at a time, but with subsections bookmarked, other codes you can bring up the entire code but bookmarks are for the whole chapter. My main issue is this makes it inconsistent for searching/solving equations. If you can only bring up a chapter search and navigation is easy but if an equation or variable is referenced in another chapter you end up bouncing around for a while. (I suggest writing down your entire overall equation, and then write down if you need to go somewhere else what section, I bounced around for 4 mins on a question before I made this my default process). Fortunately if you switch between those popups you are brought back to the last page you had open, I cant remember if the page memory was reset every question or not.
If the window brought up the whole code your search starts from the beginning of the code and you end up trying to cross reference what page the chapter you need starts on and hopefully you can "filter" your results like that. If that code has different page numbers than what the search shows (some codes will use page numbers that restart every chapter/section etc) you're shooting in the dark for a while. I don't want to post a specific example, but for one problem I knew exactly which chapter and section I needed to go to, but it still took me 2 minutes to just manually scroll to that equation after I got to the correct chapter...
The only potential solution I have for this is if you are registered with NCEES they should give you a web portal or something where you can use the codes as they are going to be organized on your exam day. Exam is based on codes that are a few revisions older anyway.
This isn't to scare anyone about the exam, I'm just extremely particular about consistency so these things bothered me. Some tips for anyone taking a CBT PE exam, from someone who is an anxious mess (I've taken GMAT, PMP, and PE all at Pearson with similar experiences)
1) Ask the Pearsons proctor for 2 notepads. Mine said no problem and gave me 2. If they say no be nice and mention the exam is 8 hours with 1 scheduled break and 40 math based questions per block. Most staff will give you one so they don't have to switch it out in the middle of the exam for you.
2) Check your pen BEFORE you even go in the room, and check it well, draw long lines.
3) make the most of your "uncounted time" and don't just click start exam. When you go in you have up to 8 minutes for a CBT tutorial. Use this time to set up your space. I set my cough drops (individually unwrapped in a clear ziplock bag), eye drops (those rooms are dry as hell), put in earplugs, put my pad, pen, keyboard, and mouse where I wanted them and put my locker key and ID somewhere out of the way. After your lunch break you may have a bit of time to redo your setup.
4) a lot of people talk about 6 minutes per problem, but that makes for messy numbers. I tried to track 5 problems, 30 minutes. If I had to redo the exam i'd do 5 problems in 20-25 minutes morning and leave myself at least 4.5 hours for the afternoon. Afternoon try for the 5/30 which should leave you some time to review your flags.
5) Speaking of flags, at the very least you should put down your best guess on a flagged questions. Don't leave anything blank in case you don't have enough time to come back.
6) This is not a "real world design" exam, don't bring in your work shortcuts or methods. This is minimum competencies measured across the country. So it's really more of an academic test. This was harder for me since I graduated college 10 years ago.
EDIT
I passed!
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