Exam Mock-Ups / Studying Advice

[dateng]

Hi All,

I have my CBT scheduled in a few weeks. And to help prepare, I’ve been spending my Saturdays and days off doing 8-hour mocks up with different practice exams (Cram for the PE, NCEES). I got a 70% on one exam, but the rest, I keep getting 60% - 65%. I’ve done 4 exams so far. I don’t know why I’m constantly stuck in that range. I’ll make note of all the problems I get wrong, and spend additional days reviewing each one. They are always different topics also, not confined to just circuit analysis or applications, etc. I think I’m just really bad at remembering things. I even started making flash cards to help with that.

At this rate, should I postpone my upcoming CBT... and wait until I can consistently get a 70% on EVERY mock up I take?

Would like to hear anyone’s feedback, if anyone’s been in a similar circumstance.

 

[akyip]

One recommendation I have is to flag the questions you are having trouble with or making mistakes, and repetitively doing these questions until you get it right and drill the concepts or topics you struggle with better into your head.

You might be surprised by how repetitively doing practice exam problems can help you better prepare for the actual exam.

 

[akyip]

Also, which specific questions are you having trouble with? Post them here, so that we can try to help you at this forum.

 

[DarkLegion PE]

I don't recommend postponing your test. I feel the PE is something you'll always feel like you're not prepared enough for.

I think you have a good plan by tackling the practice exams. In addition to repeating the problems to drill the concepts mentioned above, I also recommend searching this forum for the problems tripping you up and see how others approached the problem. Always found it helpful to see the thinking process others have

 

[RedRaider2020]

Those Cram Exams might be harder than the actual exam so don't beat yourself up too bad. They are really good practice though. Try the two engineering pro guide exams and the electrical PE review exam also. Sounds like you're pretty close to passing. If you go back over the exams again I bet you remember how to do most of the ones you missed now that you've studied the solutions. If you remember the solutions to the problems on all of those practice exams then you're probably going to pass. I would spend every waking hour I had doing those practice exams as quickly as possibly (don't get stuck on a question for more than about 10 min) and then redoing them. As a bonus once you've done them once you'll be able to redo them much quicker, maybe around 1/3 of your original time the second time around.

 

[tmntjmc]

I just got my results that I did not pass. It's very confusing/ frustrating as I had taken many practice exams, drilled the concepts to where I was getting in the 70% and greater range on the NCEES and Engineer pro guide exam.. there was just a bunch of hypothetical qualitative type questions that was not covered in any of the material I had studied up to this point. And even googling those now I don't see a solid explanation..

 

[Be-n]

Not sure how it is in electrical, but I realized that in PE Civil Structural I had to heavily use codes to answer generic question. If someone wasn’t familiar with the codes and relied heavily on their study binder and books, they probably missed a lot of questions because only codes had a right answer for some look up question. These questions also tricky sometimes because some of them look too easy and it is so appealing to save time and answer it based on my experience without looking into the code. It often leads to a mistake as the codes often have some BUTs in a footnote that changes the answer.
So, the point is try to use your reference material listed on NCEES to study for the exam, not just your summary notes and books. Get familiar with the structure of every reference material and tab everything. Highlight important things. For some of us, it means going over 10,000 pages of material....

 

[Zach Stone P.E.]

A few others in this thread have already mentioned our practice exam. We don't forget we have a large number of practice problems available for free inside the Free Trial of our online study program for the Electrical Power PE Exam.

 

[patkt]

@dateng ; Did you finished your exam? Have you got your results yet?