Well,
I passed my first time through last April, so apparently whatever I did worked.
I read through this exact thread in March to get ideas.
Myself, I:
1) Took Thursday Afternoon off, and just came home. I spent a couple hours doing some reading in the MERM, then a few hours organizing my materials and packing them into a pullman type suitcase with rollers. What all that was done, I watched a movie and went to bed about 10pm or so. I probably should have hit the sack a little early than that though.
2) I got up pretty early the next day, maybe 5:00am?but I am fortunate in that the Exam was here in Spokane, so I didn't need to drive very far. about 20 minutes. I had a light breakfast, packed a lunch. A brought down 16 oz Monster energy drinks. One for the morning session, one for the afternoon session. Someone else suggested that, and I worked well. Had some water with me too.
3) I got down to the exam place about 30 minutes before they opened the doors (6:30am I think)...just to make sure I wasn't running tight or late and stressed. (I normally run late...and I didn't want any extra stress).
4) I took several extra books that I hadn't really studied, just as a "Hail Mary" option, but you really don't have time to hunt through books that you aren't familiar with. I used the MERM for about 60% of the references, the MArk's Handbook for about 10%, the Cameron Hydraulic Data book for about 25%, and all other references for about 5%...and those were probroblems I was just lost on and had no idea in the other books of where to go.
I took the Fluids/Thermo Systems module, so the Cameron book was very useful. A lot of it is in the MERM, but the tables are far more complete. For example, when determining friction loss of water through a pipe, you can do all the long math of Darcy's formula, or you can just pop open the Cameron book, look at the appropriate pipe size table from 1/4" to 192" diameter, and pull it out of there. It's got viscous liquid losses, steam losses, and pipe fitting losses all in there, along with a great chapter on calculating the Net Positive Suction Head. It was very helpful in the afternoon session in particular, as there seemed to be a lot of Fluids problems...but that probably changes each exam.
I think the Civil's and HVAC ME's need more books. Some people had a LOT of books, but I don't know how they had time to look at them all. Really, about 4 books and a binder of my notes would have been all I really needed.
5) At lunch I just went to the car and had my lunch. I didn't want to get stuck in a resturant during the lunch rush and get stressed on time.
6) Had my second energy drink during the afternoon session.
7) Went out to dinner with the wife, and went skiing the next day (we had a ton of snow and there was 160" at the top of Silver Mountain on April 12th. it was 70 degrees and a wonderful day, and it helped me to unwind after a test that I was sure I didn't pass.
My overall tips for preparring and taking the exam are summed up thus.
1) Start early, 3-4 months early, and ease back into the study mode. Ramp up as you go.
2) Over the last 2-3 weeks, cram! Study every night and on weekends. Work a ton of problems. You retain things you saw 3 weeks ago better than 3 months ago.
3) The last week, review. Go back and review chapters you studied 3-4 months early.
4) Practice problems are important, but there's a fair number of non quantitative or very simple calculation problems. Remember that you read about those questions before, and being able to open up a book and look up the answer quickly is important. Although you average 6 minutes per propblem, most problems either take more or less. So on those simple calc or non-quantitative, it's imporant to be able to go right to the answer quickly and move on, to then have more time for the longer calculation problems. Hunting through various books and indexes to find the definition of a fillet weld can take valuable time that would be better spent on problem that requires several calculations.
So reviewing your primary material like the MERM or Mark's is imporant too. Just read the chapters all the way though. My usual way of studying in college was to tear into the problems, and then read what I needed to from the chapters to solve the problems. But it really is helpful here to read the chapter, then work the problems from that chapter.
5) Finally, TIME MANAGEMENT. This goes back to #4. I cannot stress this enough. This was my biggest problem. I'd hit a problem that I -sorta- knew. I knew it just well enough to waste 20 minutes on it and not have an answer that I was sure of. SKIP THOSE PROBLEMS and come back to them. They seemed to hide a bunch of short calc/non-quantitative questions towards the end after I'd already got behind and was running late. I ended up blowing easy questions later because I struggled with the hard ones earlier and wasted too much time. They call the 15 minute warning and I have 15 problems I haven't got to yet...and 10 of those are pretty pretty simple...but I still don't have enough time...that was frustrating.
My advice, work your way through all the problems on a first pass. If it's a simple calc/non-quantitative, knock it out. Pick the low hanging fruit. It it looks like a longer calculation problem, skip it and move on. DON'T WORRY if you skip like 10 problems in a row. Like a said, it seemed like a lot of short simple problems were hidden in the later questions, liek they knew you'd have been banging your head against those longer ones up front by then and would be frustrated, stressed, and running short on time. A-holes! ;-)
Remember, a simple calc/non-quantitative problem that takes you a minute or two to solve has exactly the same value as a long truss question, or a Thermodynamic efficiency problem, or a water pipe system analysis problem. So don't obsess on the longer, "real" probelms and ignore those simple ones. If you're going to get beat, get beat by the hard problems, don't get beat by not getting to all thesimple ones. Nail all of those first.
I cannot stress this enough, as this was the torpedo that almost sank my ship. I probably had 10 problems in the morning session that I hadn't even got to yet when they called the 15 minute warning. As I was on a mad rush to read them...I saw several times, "OH, I know how to do that...I just need a few minutes that I don't have anymore!"
I swore I wouldn't let that happen again in teh afternoon...but sure enough, I had about 13 problems I haven't even looked at when they called the 15 minute warning. Fortunately, about 8 of them were simple calc/non-quantitative that I was able to bust out fast. But I was rushed, stressed, and I shouldn't have let myself get into that situation yet again. Had I not passed, that would have been the reason.
Ok, that my 2 cents worth...good luck!
