COVID19 and CBT Tests thru PearsonVUE

[BuffaloWings]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid 

I am curious how today went?

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

@BuffaloWings
It's finally over! Woo! I am pretty confident I passed. The testing process was very smooth. Got to the Pearson VUE center at 6:50a, one of the two the proctor arrived around 7:10 and they started me going by 7:40. I found it be be slightly harder than the NCEES practice test and much easier than the PPI practice tests. I finished with 40 minutes to spare and checked some work although I was pretty brain dead at that point. All the Pearson VUE employees were excellent. I'm so relieved its over. Today is the first weekend day that I haven't had to study during for like 4 months. Regarding availability, they had cut the number of seats in half and a mask is MANDATORY. From the talk between employees it seems like they are in a period of extreme flux right now in terms of policy so things might change. Best of luck on your test! If you have any general questions feel free to ask them. I won't give any test specific info obviously.

 

[BuffaloWings]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid

Congratulations!  I bet you feel 100 times better now that it is over. I’m struggling to keep up the studying with not knowing If my exam will keep being delayed because of the Restrictions in NY. 
 

Did you feel like you had to be familiar with topics, equations, references, etc that were not included in their provided reference manual?

 

[cjohnson]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid  I also want to say congratulations.  Your posts and responses in the last few months have been helpful to me in my preparation process.  I appreciate the feedback on difficultly compared to the NCEES practice exam and the PPI material.  I now have both so that is a good gauge.

I am also interested in to what extent you felt that you needed additional information not provided in the reference manual?  Obviously I don't want you to disclose anything about the exam material specifically, just in general how comprehensive did you feel the reference material was.

Thank you and let us know when you do get your results.

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

Hey @BuffaloWings and @cjohnson thank you for the well wishes! 

To answer your question regarding the reference manual, I felt that a vast majority of what you need to reference is in there. However, to finish in time you basically need to immediately know what section of the handbook you must reference, at least on most questions. Searching without knowing what section/equation is relevant will eat up a lot of time. You can do it occasionally, but it can take 2-4 minutes up of your 6 minute allocation. I had memorized what word to search that was unique to each section and problem type in the handbook because searching generic words is of little use since there are so many hits. I had also memorized all the most basic equations that come up in many problem types. I found that to save me a lot of time. With that I was able to avoid using the handbook at all for some problems and when I did need to look up the equation I knew where it was and how to get there quickly using a unique word. I believe all this is vague enough to not violate the non-disclosure.

Best of luck to both of you!! 

 

[Abogos]

I started studying in December 2019 for my CBT MDM Exam on April 18th 2020 in California but my exam got cancelled and they scheduled me randomly for May 18 in another state And they emailed and said that the appointment is random just to make sure I have a spot to sit in for the exam and I will need to sign in and reschedule the exam at my desired location. I did and the soonest appointment I could find around here was August 3rd. It sucks that my exam was delayed for that long but what can I do. Looks like there are a lot of test takers around here in Los Angeles. 
 

@Ijoinedbecausecovid congratulations for getting it done. I took the last paper/pencil MDM exam in Oct 2019 and I am retaking it in August 2020 in the new format. I wonder if it is going to be easier or harder with the new format. How did you like it? Was looking for stuff in the manual easy? Were there surprises in terms of concepts that NCEES has in their exam specifications? 

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

NCEES just told me I passed. Whew, what a tremendous relief. Best of luck to everyone!

@Abogos I don't have any personal experience with the PE pencil-and-paper exam, although my FE was paper back in the day. Its pretty much the same except that the searchable handbook is faster/easier than using a physical book. But you do need to know the handbook really, really well to do the look up in time. No surprises, although I used the the PPI Learning Hub to prep and it is exhaustive. PPI LH is really brutal, but if you get through it your chances on the test are good. Sorry to hear they are closed up in Cali. Best of luck staying fresh, I know how much that sucks to have to maintain. I had considered driving to another county and staying in a hotel to take the test sooner rather than wait for a local place to open. Just a thought.  

 

[BuffaloWings]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid

Do they let you use asterisks or wildcards when searching the manual?

 

[LyceeFruit PE]

Congrats @Ijoinedbecausecovid !!!!!

 

[CAPLS]

I started studying in December 2019 for my CBT MDM Exam on April 18th 2020 in California but my exam got cancelled and they scheduled me randomly for May 18 in another state And they emailed and said that the appointment is random just to make sure I have a spot to sit in for the exam and I will need to sign in and reschedule the exam at my desired location. I did and the soonest appointment I could find around here was August 3rd. It sucks that my exam was delayed for that long but what can I do. Looks like there are a lot of test takers around here in Los Angeles. 
 

@Ijoinedbecausecovid congratulations for getting it done. I took the last paper/pencil MDM exam in Oct 2019 and I am retaking it in August 2020 in the new format. I wonder if it is going to be easier or harder with the new format. How did you like it? Was looking for stuff in the manual easy? Were there surprises in terms of concepts that NCEES has in their exam specifications? 

NCEES and Pearson are trying to get as many CBT Centers up and running as soon as possible, but they are doing this while having to limit capacity at any given time while also adhering to any local or regional social distancing constraints.  Not to mention there are other professions testing simultaneously including those medical that will likely be receiving priority access due to COVID. It will slowly get better, but appointments will be strung out over a longer period of time than anyone involved had hoped for. Good luck. 

 

[EngrAsc]

Has anyone who has applied for the third quarter CA survey/seismic exams received any response back regarding their application review/approval from the Board? I submitted my application early February and my check was cashed mid February by CA DCA for application processing. I heard back from the Board Mid March that my application was sent for technical review but when I inquired about the status of the application via email late April/after the 60 day mark, they said that the Board never received my application. It's been two weeks since my last email forwarding the Board evaluator my USPS tracking/DCA email showing that my application was submitted to the Board and forwarded for technical review.  I also called the phone # listed on the State website and was given my evaluators phone number and told to call on Friday when they are in the office. I left a voicemessage a week and a half ago, no response both from the email/voice message. I understand with the COVID19 Pandemic there might be a delay in processing applications but I'm just worried my application is lost as it's been 86 days from when they first received my application and 82 days from when my check was cashed. 

 

[CAPLS]

Has anyone who has applied for the third quarter CA survey/seismic exams received any response back regarding their application review/approval from the Board? I submitted my application early February and my check was cashed mid February by CA DCA for application processing. I heard back from the Board Mid March that my application was sent for technical review but when I inquired about the status of the application via email late April/after the 60 day mark, they said that the Board never received my application. It's been two weeks since my last email forwarding the Board evaluator my USPS tracking/DCA email showing that my application was submitted to the Board and forwarded for technical review.  I also called the phone # listed on the State website and was given my evaluators phone number and told to call on Friday when they are in the office. I left a voicemessage a week and a half ago, no response both from the email/voice message. I understand with the COVID19 Pandemic there might be a delay in processing applications but I'm just worried my application is lost as it's been 86 days from when they first received my application and 82 days from when my check was cashed. 

Please send me a private message with your name and contact info so this can be checked on. Thanks. 

 

[Abogos]

NCEES just told me I passed. Whew, what a tremendous relief. Best of luck to everyone!

@Abogos I don't have any personal experience with the PE pencil-and-paper exam, although my FE was paper back in the day. Its pretty much the same except that the searchable handbook is faster/easier than using a physical book. But you do need to know the handbook really, really well to do the look up in time. No surprises, although I used the the PPI Learning Hub to prep and it is exhaustive. PPI LH is really brutal, but if you get through it your chances on the test are good. Sorry to hear they are closed up in Cali. Best of luck staying fresh, I know how much that sucks to have to maintain. I had considered driving to another county and staying in a hotel to take the test sooner rather than wait for a local place to open. Just a thought.  

Nice, congrats for passing it and getting it done. That’s great news.

I also used PPI learning hub this time around, the 3 month subscription and it ended just before my initially scheduled exam date. I tried to do all the problems PPI learning hub offered in each area and took their diagnostic and practice exams. Now I am just reviewing. 

One question I’d like to ask you and it is very unclear for everyone who went from pencil/paper to CBT is that how much memorization is required for the CBT test? Concepts like material that is not quantitative and has lots of details, do we need to memorize all of the info in the MERM? 

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid

Do they let you use asterisks or wildcards when searching the manual?

@BuffaloWings I don't know, it never occurred to me to try any wildcards. The search works sort of like asterisk by default because you can search a partial word and it will find all occurrences of that partial string. When you search it will show you a list of all the string matches in context of the word so you will know what word the string appears in. This video by NCEES shows exactly how it works: 




I felt like you don't HAVE to memorize equations, but it will speed you up to memorize the common ones. Knowing where to find the complex ones is probably more efficient than memorizing them. I did read all of the chapters in the MERM that the Learning Hub tells you to (which includes their materials chapters). I read them once sometime over 4 months and memorized all the qualitative MEPP problems and I found that to be sufficient although not perfect. The breadth of qualitative problems is unbelievably wide so its probably impossible to memorize all the subject matter that could be asked about. Sorry for the vagueness, but I prefer to tread lightly around the non-disclosure.   

 

[CoolEngr]

NCEES just told me I passed. Whew, what a tremendous relief. Best of luck to everyone!
 

Wow so with the new computer tests you get your results days after taking the exam? 

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

@CoolEngr Yeah it is really nice. CBT results officially take 7-10 days to finalize. Mine was faster. They send you an email when the results are posted and you can check on your MyNCEES account. 

 

[ChooChooEngineer_PE]

@Ijoinedbecausecovid Did you come across any questions that required use of the section in the manual that still have incorrect information? it seems most of that was in the TFS exam but I'm curious if you went from memory or used incorrect equations for consistency. Guess it doesn't matter much since you passed so Congrats!

 

[Ijoinedbecausecovid]

@ChooChooEngineer_PE Before I took the test I posted about the errors in the handbook v1.1 here: 

 

[SamT]

For those of you who had their CBT exams cancelled/automatically rescheduled, how far in advance of your original test date were you notified/noticed and rescheduled? I'm signed up for the TFS on July 22nd and, like many others, the next soonest testing date is like October (if I'm lucky and no other dates open up when they cancel other tests).

I wanted an idea on how much advance notice I might be able to expect. Currently, my NCEES dashboard shows the "we can't show you your test date" but when I go to the Pearson website my test date and location remains unchanged.

 

[ChooChooEngineer_PE]

@ChooChooEngineer_PE Before I took the test I posted about the errors in the handbook v1.1 here: 

I'm well aware of the errors in the book. I was just curios if any of your questions forced you to pick between the correct answer and the correct answer per the handbook?

since your comment mad it seem like the errors were not going to get fixed before your exam.