Civil-structural NCEES practice test

[VAPSU]

Just wondering for those who have taken civil-structural if the NCEES practice test afternoon questions were representative of the actual exam questions or if you found the exam to be easier or harder.

Thanks!

 

[kengineer]

I would say the difficulty level is probably about the same on average. On the real test there will be some afternoon questions that you can solve within a minute and almost be afraid it was that easy. Others take a bit more brain power or searching in the codes, but can be done.

On the test, I would say 20 of the questions were pretty straightforward and I felt pretty good about how to solve them. Another 10 were solvable after some digging. Then there were the last 10 that left me scratching my head. Of those, 2 or 3 of them you won’t find the answer anywhere in a book you will have that day, they are going to come from raw experience. You just have to hope you have the same experience as the guy who wrote the question. Ha!

 

[blybrook PE]

The NCEES example problems are old test questions, so yes, they are representative of what to expect. I found that the 6-minute solutions book also helped immensely when I studied for my retest. I would also recommend going through all of your code books and having them tabbed for the basic sections (seismic, wind, snow, etc...)

I found that about 25% was directly from the code books this past test in the afternoon. Having done the 6 minute solutions permitted me to work through about 50% of the questions in no time flat and I worked on the other 25% until 15 minutes was called. I used that last 15 minutes to recheck what I could and ensure that all of the proper bubbles were filled in.

Good luck!