Feel good about how you did on the exam?

[goast55]

Took the Mechanical Design exam.  It was okay.  Felt like a million bucks after the morning session.. The afternoon session was a different story and feel like I didn't manage my time well at all.  It will be okay, now all we can do is relax and see where we fall.  Here's to hoping everyone did well!

 

[Lkandil]

So I guess I'll be the first to respond regarding the October 2017 test. I feel I did poorly.

I guessed on probably 1/3 of the questions, if not more. The Civil breadth for me was much more difficult than depth (Water & Enviro). For several questions I could not fully understand the illustrations provided, and thus couldn't complete the problem. I spoke with several others who felt the Civil Breadth was harder than they anticipated it would be (and some re-takers who said it was harder than their previous attempts), but maybe I just spoke with the roughly 30% who aren't going to pass. Some topics that I felt confident in (trusses and horizontal curves), I could not get the answers to.

I figure there's not much chance I will pass. Lets say worst case scenario I guessed on 40% of the problems, or 32 questions in total. That means I have to get all of the questions I actually got answers for correctly (unlikely), and also get at least 8 of the 32 guesses right to get into the 70% cutoff range (just using April's cut off for an example).

Oh well - it was definitely an experience I won't soon forget and at least I have a feel for what it will be like the next go round. The only thing I will be doing differently the next time is taking EET on demand for both breadth and depth. Just not sure about the timing of it all - do I want to jump right back in for the April test or wait until next October.

I consider myself a realist by nature (my wife say's I'm closer to a pessimist - she's right, as usual) so I've already prepared myself for a fail based upon the facts of the matter. If I get a pass come December, even better.

I'm sure you did fine! I'm trying to make a list of the problems types for the AM to jog my memory but am coming up blank!!! AHH the Stress Sucks!

 

[Lkandil]

This was my first time taking this crazy thing called the PE and WOW! NOT COOL!!!

I took Civil + Construction and this was not what I was expecting at all. Way more theory/qualitative problems then any one would ever need. Screw Transpo questions by the way too!

Made a list of questions types that i can remember that were on there but it turns out i have a ****** memory too... lol if a fellow October Civil-Construction taker would like to have a therapy session  please reach out! 

GOOD LUCK TO US ALL!!!!  

 

[skc005]

Took the CA-Seismic this weekend and will be taking Surveying next Monday. I felt good about how much I prepared for Seismic, but here I am still finding myself sitting around and second guessing all of my answers until they release the results.

 

[utilityeng]

I'm trying to make a list of the problems types for the AM to jog my memory but am coming up blank!!! AHH the Stress Sucks!

I did the same after returning home. I think I was able to remember (vaguely) about 10 questions. In hind site, I think I should have gone to my vehicle during the lunch break and written down the kind of problems I got hung up on, and then did the same once the test was over for the afternoon session. That's a hard pill to swallow though when all you want to do during lunch is forget about that damn morning session, and all you want to do afterward is get the hell home!

 

[utilityeng]

Feeling pretty good about it.  I had about 5 in the AM and 6 in the PM that I had to come back to.  I think I was able to figure them all out except 1 or 2 in each session.  I'm sure I made some dumb units mistakes or something like that as well.  Left each session about 45 mins early.

Good for you @casummerlin! That's awesome to be able to have finished with that much time remaining. I neeed every last second and still wasn't able to complete every problem. You've obviously got nothing to worry about. Must be a great feeling!

 

[casummerlin]

Good for you [mention=35008]casummerlin[/mention]! That's awesome to be able to have finished with that much time remaining. I neeed every last second and still wasn't able to complete every problem. You've obviously got nothing to worry about. Must be a great feeling!

Thanks. I took Mechanical TFS, btw.

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[DC_engineer2017]

I guessed on 4 questions in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.  Other than that there were a few on both sessions which I am not 100% confident though I did get a definitive answer on them. Not sure if my answer was the right one though. So I ma thinking 75%-80%  of the remaining 70 questions or so. I could be really on the borderline of 70% pass score (about 56 pass score). But who knows what the pass score will be. I heard some one failed with a 56 or 57 last time in April 2017...

 

[neelspeaks2u]

I took the Civil - Construction, AM was not as expected, there were many concept based tricky questions. PM was a relief compared to AM. 

Overall i am confident about 45 Questions, hoping for atleast 30% of my guess work out and take me to 56 number. 

Do you think they will lower the cut off to anything lower than 56? I spoke to 4-5 people , everybody feels the same way for AM...

 

[DC_engineer2017]

I don't know bud unless there were a couple of questions that lot of people got wrong. In that case, they will not count one question i guess. But i don't see the pass score going below 56...Atleast not for WRE and Transportation but may be for construction and Structures from what i am hearing....

 

[mnguy88]

I agree with many of you that the AM was difficult. I took it last spring and felt this time around was just odd and different. So many theory questions and I had to reread many questions over and over again. Some were just plain confusing!

 

[Lkandil]

I did the same after returning home. I think I was able to remember (vaguely) about 10 questions. In hind site, I think I should have gone to my vehicle during the lunch break and written down the kind of problems I got hung up on, and then did the same once the test was over for the afternoon session. That's a hard pill to swallow though when all you want to do during lunch is forget about that damn morning session, and all you want to do afterward is get the hell home!

i thought the same thing... SUNDAY lol hind sight is 20/20 i guess.. lets chop it up email me XXXXX.

 

[utilityeng]

I agree with many of you that the AM was difficult. I took it last spring and felt this time around was just odd and different. So many theory questions and I had to reread many questions over and over again. Some were just plain confusing!

Agreed - for some of the questions, I could have sat there all day with my reference material and still not have a definitive answer. I don't think it was a matter of the material not being somewhere in my reference books, but more so of me just not being able to understand the question, and/or the illustration(s) accompanying the question.  

 

[enfinity]

Thanks. I took Mechanical TFS, btw.

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crap, that makes me feel bad.  I felt prepared going into Mechanical TFS (smoked the official NCEES practice exam) and felt really bad coming out of the actual exam.  I thought it was harder, but I dunno if I just performed poorly. Ran out of time in both sessions, had to guess on probably 1/3rd of all questions.

Out of curiosity, did you find the exam to be harder than the official NCEES practice exam? No specifics needed.

 

[utilityeng]

Every time I came upon a short question that did not contain any numbers I cringed at the realization that I was either going to know it or not. I usually didn't have much luck using the CERM to answer these kind of problems.

 

[casummerlin]

crap, that makes me feel bad.  I felt prepared going into Mechanical TFS (smoked the official NCEES practice exam) and felt really bad coming out of the actual exam.  I thought it was harder, but I dunno if I just performed poorly. Ran out of time in both sessions, had to guess on probably 1/3rd of all questions.
 
Out of curiosity, did you find the exam to be harder than the official NCEES practice exam? No specifics needed.

I did find it a little harder than the practice exams.

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[enfinity]

I did find it a little harder than the practice exams.

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Just a little harder? crap. hahaha, that's not good.

 

[bbarcelo16]

Took the PE for the first time in Civil-Geotechnical. I have been studying for a solid 2-3 months, and felt very prepared.

Both AM and PM sessions had many poorly worded questions that were hard to understand. Both were much trickier than any practice exam I had taken. Didn't feel that there were as many "gimme" questions as I had seen on NCEES practice exams.

Luckily, it seems everyone feels the exact same way about both sessions. Here's to hoping that some of my guesses were correct. If not, I'll tackle it again in April.

 

[casummerlin]

Just a little harder? crap. hahaha, that's not good.

That was just me personally, so take it with a  grain of salt.  I think it had more to do with my strong subjects being light on the practice exam, but showing up more on the actual exam.  I don't know if that's really accurate, but it feels that way.

I think the phases described in the OP are probably accurate.

 

[Civil By Day]

This was my first time taking this crazy thing called the PE and WOW! NOT COOL!!!

I took Civil + Construction and this was not what I was expecting at all. Way more theory/qualitative problems then any one would ever need. Screw Transpo questions by the way too!

Made a list of questions types that i can remember that were on there but it turns out i have a ****** memory too... lol if a fellow October Civil-Construction taker would like to have a therapy session  please reach out! 

GOOD LUCK TO US ALL!!!!  

This was my second time around and I will say.... Much more theory on this exam than the last. I spent an extra $1000 on reference materials this time around (ugh) and it saved me on more than a few questions that were theory based.

Two from OSHA, two from Construction Planning and Methods, two from SP-4, one from Design and Control of Concrete Mixtures and one from Minimum Building Loads (I think that's ASCE 7....). I hit the index of every reference I had and some of the questions did not have answers I could track down. At that point it's just a guess and hope for the best cause honestly, there's no formula to solve that stuff.

I studied my tail off this time around and worked all of the Goswami practice exams I could find and then all of the civil and construction exams I could get on amazon. Confidence is higher than the last go around, but for me... that's not saying much. If I manage to pass it will probably be by the skin of my teeth. And yes, good luck to us all!