Deceptive Exam

[JaxTeller]

The main problem with a review course is that it entirely depends on the teacher. If you have a teacher that really understands the exam and the best way to teach you the content so you can pass, then it's well worth it, but if you have a teacher that just kind of shows up and breezes through the topics, you're better off studying on your own.

 

[DoctorWho-PE]

One of the thing that helped me the most, yet was incredibly frustrating while studying was working problems from older books, then trying to figure out why I was getting the wrong solutions.  <<**** structural code changes!>>  But it made me delve deeper into the why, rather than knowing, oh, I can do this, or oh, I can't do this. 

 

[Voomie]

Like others have said, knowing the concepts is what helped my most on the exam. It was the reason why I was one of few people who didn't walk in with a giant stack of books. Knowing the concepts should give you enough to figure out the twists they add to the problem. I feel it is a fair method to tell if an engineer can competently design something or get someone killed.

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[PowerStroke79_PE]

Ive come to the conclusion that everytime i am confused by a question it is a question relating to something i have never solved in the past. So im gonna go ahead and say it, EXPERIENCE matters. I dont have it, therefore i suck and fail everytime. I now have to re apply after 6 university credit hours relating to my discipline or after a year by the TX boards rules. Seems like they’re on to us. Still sucks though and i know a few PEs sealing plans based on extra parameters. Tough ****. 

 

[Road Guy]

FWIW-

In Civil the strategy I have always heard preached is to aim to "ace" the AM section and then shoot for a little better than half in the PM. This has been a fairly consistent theme the last 10 years.

I failed my first time and I swore the test I failed was way easier than the one I passed.

Make sure you are getting the easy ones that look complicated in the AM : ENG ECON, all the various drainage questions get disguised to look hard but are generally one particular equation.

The STR questions are going to be made to look harder than they really are.

I had a crappy soils prof (took that class in the summer and we had a part time teach / consultant by day ) and I basically had to relearn all of that stuff for the exam and how to draw those stupid soil, water, air diagrams...

I also used to preach to take a decent environmental engineering dictionary cause the questions they ask are defin not in the normal textbooks (from the prep course)

For your second attempt make sure to re study all the areas even if you did well in them because it most defin will be a very different exam the next time you see it. I believe many repeat takers fail because they mostly focus on the areas they did poorly on the previous exam.

If can be done and yes they do aim to deceive but I think we're to expect it even if we don't like it....

.02

 

[casummerlin]

If it was easy, everybody would be a PE and it wouldn't have any value.

 

[caychanh]

In Civil the strategy I have always heard preached is to aim to "ace" the AM section and then shoot for a little better than half in the PM. This has been a fairly consistent theme the last 10 years.

I've heard this many times, but I'm not a civil engineer or any engineer major ( BS chemistry) so it is especially rough to get more than 22 correct for AM so far.  I studied and practiced so much but it is understandable that I'm trying to cram 2 to 3 years of engineering school into 6 months of studying each time I try to take the PE exam.  One more try in TX and I have to wait out a year.  Hopefully I can get over the hump in April 2018.  I thought I did very well in the PM section for WRE, but my score was exactly the same as the my last try in April.  NCEES must have thrown out at least 4 or 5 problems in the PM section each time.  So I might have done better in the PM section, but it didn't show in the PM score other than a lower cut score.

 

[youngmotivatedengineer]

As some one who took the Civil Construction exam the past 2 cycles, I understand that you can't just compare the scores and question why you did worse. The questions change cycle to cycle so you are not really comparing apples to apples. For the April exam, I spent time studying concept questions and was suprised there weren't many on the exam. For the October exam, I felt the exam was heavy on concept questions. 

You also need to think about both exams and how you answered the questions.  Did you come up with an answer for everything or were there a lot of guesses. On the guesses was it a blind guess, or was it an educated guess where you were able to eliminate 1 or 2 choices to give you a better chance of guessing correctly. I failed my 1st exam by about 6 or 7 questions and was upset. However I was able to work out most problems in the morning  ( did bad on structural and Geotechnical which were my weak areas). For the afternoon, I didn't prep as well as I should have and I had about 10 questions I didn't even have a chance to look at to try and solve. If you had to guess on a lot of problems that would throw off your diagnostic since you don't know how many correct items were problems you worked and how many were guesses.

 

[youngmotivatedengineer]

I've heard this many times, but I'm not a civil engineer or any engineer major ( BS chemistry) so it is especially rough to get more than 22 correct for AM so far.  I studied and practiced so much but it is understandable that I'm trying to cram 2 to 3 years of engineering school into 6 months of studying each time I try to take the PE exam.  One more try in TX and I have to wait out a year.  Hopefully I can get over the hump in April 2018.  I thought I did very well in the PM section for WRE, but my score was exactly the same as the my last try in April.  NCEES must have thrown out at least 4 or 5 problems in the PM section each time.  So I might have done better in the PM section, but it didn't show in the PM score other than a lower cut score.

What are you using to prepare, books or a review course? I took EET depth this last round, and they were very thorough and I would imagine the breadth would be just as good. If you look at other programs make sure you know what you are getting.  For example, people who are unhappy with School of PE, tend to be unhappy because they feel it does not prepare them enough, which makes sense since they offer a "refresher"course and may not dive into details to teach the topics like other course would. If you just self-study use the test specifications as your guide so you don't waste time on stuff that has no chance of being asked on the test. 

 

[sevis]

The luck involved in passing the PE is incredibly minimal. There are a couple "know it or don't" type questions, that are basically gimmes for certain people or guesses for others, depending on what industry you work in. I had 2 that I can think of.

If you know the material conceptually and you read the questions carefully and understand that just because they give you info in a problem doesn't mean it's required to solve it, then you will pass and you won't even come close to failing. That's the bottom line. The test is incredibly fair.

 

[Rwhit PE]

Quick tip for you since I found that when I studied and took the NCEES sample exam (Civil-transpo depth) I made a few simple dumb mistakes. What I changed after that was I read the sentence of the question that asked the actual question first. Then read the details in the question. So many problems are confusing because you read them sentence by sentence and they are full of information that may not even be related to the problem. But by reading what the question was actually asking for first, then reading the the rest of it, I was much more able to quickly figure out what was important and what wasn't. 

Also, in a high pressure testing environment its easy to make a mistake due to being overwhelmed. I do this thing where if I hit hard question I'll spend WAY too much time on it before calling it and moving on. What helped me a great deal was opening up the test booklet, reading EVERY question, marking it from 1-3 (1 being "i got this" 3 being "umm....what?"), and then going back and answering things in order (1s first). The side benefit of this is that when I came back to the harder questions I didn't get overwhelmed on them because I knew that there were X amount of questions that I knew I could do. Made time management infinitely easier.

 

[caychanh]

On my first try I used old NCEES practice exams, PPI questions and some old handout presentations (ASCE?) to review structures, geotech, and other AM breadth topics.  I didn't do well at all on AM portion so my second PE attempt I used old SOPE handouts to review Geotech and Structures and scored only about 4 pts better for AM (18 to 22), but WRE depth I had same 22 pts.  I ended up with 68% which was close, but I really thought I was going to pass  :angry: .  I'm not taking any review courses, but I'm just using old study material.  I am really considering EET depth at the moment.  I wasted a lot of study time on non test spec stuff on my first PE attempt, but I think I'm moving in the right direction.  Thanks for asking

 

[CivilGuy00]

On my first try I used old NCEES practice exams, PPI questions and some old handout presentations (ASCE?) to review structures, geotech, and other AM breadth topics.  I didn't do well at all on AM portion so my second PE attempt I used old SOPE handouts to review Geotech and Structures and scored only about 4 pts better for AM (18 to 22), but WRE depth I had same 22 pts.  I ended up with 68% which was close, but I really thought I was going to pass  :angry: .  I'm not taking any review courses, but I'm just using old study material.  I am really considering EET depth at the moment.  I wasted a lot of study time on non test spec stuff on my first PE attempt, but I think I'm moving in the right direction.  Thanks for asking

So with a 44/80, the cut score actually came out to a 68%? 

 

[caychanh]

I do agree that the exam is fair and challenging at the same time.  I can study and practice so many problems, but when I sit in the exam room I am reminded of what topics I did not cover well.  It is especially hard to look up reference material in a timed environment so it is best to have all subjects well covered thoroughly.  I was a little overwhelmed my first attempt, but felt comfortable when I took it again in Oct.  Studying more and absorbing more material as I go will hopefully help me on my next attempt.

 

[caychanh]

So with a 44/80, the cut score actually came out to a 68%? 

Yes in Texas they give a percentage.  44/80 was my Civil WRE diagnostics from NCEES.  I've heard a few times that different states and different disciplines have different cut scores too.

 

[CivilGuy00]

Yes in Texas they give a percentage.  44/80 was my Civil WRE diagnostics from NCEES.  I've heard a few times that different states and different disciplines have different cut scores too.

I also took WRE. **** that is dirty. We were so close. I am also highly considering EET depth on demand. I am at the point where I have done so many problems, I have ran out of new examples.

 

[caychanh]

Ya one more problem right in AM and PM section and no more worries.  I felt really good in the WRE PM section up to problem #25, but it all went downhill after that.  

 

[CivilGuy00]

See and I felt really good in the AM, like 30/40 at least and yet I scored 24...

 

[Wade_TX]

If you had trouble in the morning portion, are you using the CERM?  

 

[CivilGuy00]

If you had trouble in the morning portion, are you using the CERM?  

I used the CERM and a binder with other references for the morning, yes.