Club of people who failed April 2015

[JerusalemPE.]

I take offense to saying my discipline is "easy". What may be easy to you is not necessarily easy to others.

 

[Engineer222]

I have straight up Zeros in plant design and operations ...yes you can be bad at guessing ...oh well I will try again ..

 

[iwire]

For those who are taking power, I recommended Georgia Tech course. Overall I like the course except a few thing they need to work on it..

The fault/protection need more beef up on the subject even though the professor is great.

More on lighting stuffs as well.

 

[bellecory15]

This was my first shot at the exam and I failed miserably L

I felt like I studied a lot and don’t understand how I could have studied differently, more efficiently. I was hoping someone that has taken the exam more than once and passed could give me some advice on what do to differently….

This is what I did during the months leading up to the exam:

Civil Structural Exam

*End of November-January: I started by going through the Structural section of the CERM and I worked most of the problems found on these sections.

Week: 3-4 days, 2 hours each day. Weekend: 3-4 hours each day.

*February-March: did the on demand classes for the morning section from School of PE and the workshop problems.

Week: 3-4 days, 2-3 hours each day. Weekend: 6-8 hours each day

*March- 1st week of April: did the on demand classes for the depth section from School of PE and workshop problems

Week: 3-4 days, 2-3 hours each day. Weekend: 6-8 hours each day

*2 weeks in April: worked on practice exams

Week: 3-4 days, 2 hours each day. Weekend: 6-7 hours each day

*April 16: studied economics

For the practice exams I used older versions of practice exams from NCEES and I also got the new version that came out for this exam. I also did the 6min solutions problems (morning only, I was told the afternoon problems were overkill).When I took the exams I did pretty well in the morning: ~85%, and ~65% for the afternoon. I thought the exam was much harder than the practice exams tho L

I’m pretty much burned out at this point, I do not how I can study differently or more efficiently…I’m pretty upset/down/disappointed that I have to take it again….I’m sure everybody that failed feels the same way…

I would appreciate any advice on how I can change my study strategy…all suggestions are welcome…

Thanks guys!

 

[Civil Dawg]

Bellecory a 85% morning and 65% afternoon is a score of 60/80. Did you score this high and not pass?!

 

[Mike in Gastonia]

Bellecory a 85% morning and 65% afternoon is a score of 60/80. Did you score this high and not pass?!

I think those scores were for the practice exams......

 

[Civil Dawg]

Also, I didn't see anything in your study plan about the codes. I'd recommend you become very familiar with IBC, ASCE 7, AISC Steel Construction Manual and NDS manual. There are many tables etc that turn a problem that you may not know how to solve into a quick 30 second lookup problem if you know where to find it

 

[Engineer222]

chemical open for advice

 

[scubasniper2009]

I ended up putting in about 800-900 hours of studying and passed the Mechanical: Thermal and Fluids in the April '15 exam (first try). Started in October reading through the MERM cover to cover and finished in February, working all the problems for every chapter except for some of the 1hr solution problems. Although this may have been unnecessary, I found that this really helped me become intimately familiar with where everything was at. I highlighted important things and made a few notes in the ledgers like "DON"T FORGET TO MULTIPLY BY #####" especially if I commonly made those mistakes in the practice problems. Took two older NCEES practice exams, and got about 80% of them right the first time. Retook them both 2 more times with scores at least 78/80. Then decided it would be a good idea to try the Lindeburg practice exam. Got 50% of the attempted problems right but was using too much time. Gave up half way through. Those problems were taking 30 minutes in some cases. Destroyed my confidence. Took the NCEES exams again to feel better. In the last week I made a 20 page formula book and tabbed the MERM neatly using the exceptional Shaggy Method. This was probably the single most helpful thing I did because it made finding things so much faster.

For the Mech T&F exam I would highly recommend working through metric problems, even for plant cycles and fluid systems even though we seldom use them in the real world. Also practice conversions!

 

[kmart30]

Failed for the first time with a 52/80 on the Florida civil geotech test. Studied for 2 months straight and took a review course for the AM section. Bought practice exams out the booty and did problems until I turned into a smurf. The afternoon chewed me up and spit me out sideways. As I was taking the afternoon section I became extremely disgruntled as I was realizing how these questions were for a different species of engineer that I was unaware of.

I actually do geotech for a living and this section made me feel like the last 4 years were a waste of time and I'm absolutely clueless about dirt (not really, and yes I just said dirt). Sorry just venting; I know I'm kinda close to the mark but still not there yet.

I'm going to have a different strategy this time around and hopefully I'll learn how to hit the curveball.

 

[John QPE]

Kmart ... make sure you are familiar with the NCEES outline, and follow the outline through the NCEES practice exams. There is no reason why any problem should come as a complete surprise. By the time you are ready to take the exam, you should pretty much know what they are going to ask, and how many ways they can possibly ask it.

I didn't use the NCEES exams as "practice tests" but as ways to see how they can ask problems about retaining walls, culverts, or traffic signals (I was Transpo). This approach helped immensely.

Good luck!

 

[Swimfastalex PE]

Anyone know is it possible to be able to see the exam. One of my coworkers said that you used to be able to do that (you couldn't bring anything with you, but you could still view the exam). I only ask, because it seems I was very close to passing, and I still can't figure out where I messed up on. I know they have the diagnostic report, but that still doesn't tell me what exact question I messed up on, and why I messed up on it. I was able to answer almost all questions, so it seems like maybe I just made a little error, that I want to make sure I don't do again in October.

 

[kmart30]

John...I was very familiar with the outline but my weakness's were in areas that we almost never experience in Florida in the real world. I felt like I studied this areas enough to turn out a few questions right but this was not the case. The problem I have is that this is a national test but geologic conditions are highly variable across the states. Still not an excuse but I think the geotech should be more region specific and focus less on areas that are less likely to be encountered in that region.

The positives out of all this is that I know what to expect on test day and I know what areas to focus on. I think maybe taking a class for the afternoon section would be beneficial this time around...

 

[John QPE]

Forget what you know and know the test ... we all have to do this.

@swim ... I've never heard of this. I know you can pay a fee to have your test reviewed and hand graded, but I don't think you actually see the results/exam.

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

Anyone know is it possible to be able to see the exam. One of my coworkers said that you used to be able to do that (you couldn't bring anything with you, but you could still view the exam). I only ask, because it seems I was very close to passing, and I still can't figure out where I messed up on. I know they have the diagnostic report, but that still doesn't tell me what exact question I messed up on, and why I messed up on it. I was able to answer almost all questions, so it seems like maybe I just made a little error, that I want to make sure I don't do again in October.

To my knowledge you personally cannot see the exam to identify which ones you got incorrect. You can request that NCEES review and possibly regrade your exam but that's about it.

 

[kmart30]

Forget what I know? Great advice... :Failed:

 

[John QPE]

Forget what I know? Great advice... :Failed:

Then repeat what you did for this past exam. Better?

 

[khusaibi_PE]

Any advice from repeat test takers study techniques they've tweaked.

Also would you advise on using the same practice exams again and again or try to get new practice exams to work through

For April '15 I had: (1) NCEES PE Exam (Latest Ed.), (2) Goswami Practice Exams Book, (3) Mike's Practice Exam

Any other resources you'd recommend please share

 

[kmart30]

Yes---Do the same thing and expect different results! This is what all engineers do right? :deadhorse:

 

[Civil Dawg]

HKHUSAIBI I would say to try to find as many NCEES practice exams as possible. The NCEES PE Exam (2nd to newest edition) is pretty easy to find and while about half of the problems are the same as the latest edition, getting your hands on as many NCEES problems as possible is invaluable to me. Another suggestion is the old FE Practice Test (latest edition is online only). The afternoon FE portion is very similar to the morning PE portion. If your taking Civil/Structural then the NCEES SE Practice Exam is a good study tool for the afternoon session. There are a good many AASHTO problems in the book that you can pretty much ignore for the PE, but there are plenty of ASCE 7, ACI 318, AISC etc problems to make it worthwhile in my opinion.

Again, I really feel like getting as many NCEES problems as possible is invaluable because these are the types of questions that will be on the exam.