Good luck, everyone!

[TehMightyEngineer]

Have you hear that about the vertical and the lateral morning portion?

Just vertical.

 

[FL_Structural_PE]

Just vertical.

Make that one more person with an issue on a couple of questions on the morning vertical. I felt like I was doing them correctly but I wasn't getting any of the options.

Of course there is also the possibility that I was just doing them wrong.

 

[tua85366]

Make that one more person with an issue on a couple of questions on the morning vertical. I felt like I was doing them correctly but I wasn't getting any of the options.

Of course there is also the possibility that I was just doing them wrong.

Likewise. Had about 4 or 5 AM Vertical questions where I had to rework them with slightly tweaked design parameters and still wasn't getting exact answers. I probably wasted a fair amount of time on these. Definitely was getting something close, but not in the realm of what NCEES considers "close to..". I'm not even talking about bridge (AASHTO) questions (Buildings guy here). 

 

[ZEZO4]

Agree, might be different in Florida, but in Texas (where I currently reside, went to school in Bama) I didn't have to do any extensive applications for the SE once I passed the PE, went to the NCEES website and signed up. I called Texas board to make sure I didn't need to do anything else and they were confused on why I would want to take another test once I had my PE.

I'm in Texas the same thin

 

[ZEZO4]

Is NCEES Give us a curve for the SE Exam  ?

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

NCEES doesn't grade on a curve but does throw out questions that were misleading or incorrect and the cut score does change depending on the difficulty of the exam compared to some benchmark.

 

[ZEZO4]

NCEES doesn't grade on a curve but does throw out questions that were misleading or incorrect and the cut score does change depending on the difficulty of the exam compared to some benchmark.

Make Sense, Thank you TehMightyEngineer.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

From here (emphasis mine): http://ncees.org/engineering/engineering-scoring/

Licensing exams differ from most other exams. After each administration, every NCEES exam undergoes extensive statistical analysis to determine the minimum level of performance required for entry into the profession...

• NCEES scans all answer sheets as they are received from the states.
  
• A psychometric analysis is performed on a sample of answer sheets from each multiple-choice exam to identify any questions with unusual statistics. These questions are flagged for review.
  
• At least two subject-matter experts, who are licensed engineers or surveyors, review the flagged items. In addition, NCEES reviews all examinee comment forms, and the subject-matter experts consider comments on the forms about specific exam questions. If the reviews confirm an error in a question, credit may be given for more than one answer.
  
• When the analyses and reviews are completed, NCEES changes the answer keys as necessary. The passing score and final correct answers for each exam are then used to score all the answer sheets. Scanners are calibrated before and during scoring. A percentage of the answer sheets are manually verified, and the results are compared to the machine score to ensure accuracy.
  

How are passing scores determined?


When an exam is introduced or when its specifications change, a committee of subject-matter experts works with experienced psychometricians (testing experts with a background in statistics) to determine the level of performance that corresponds with minimal competence in that discipline. This becomes the passing score. NCEES does not publish passing scores because they change with each administration. NCEES scores each exam with no predetermined percentage of examinees that should pass or fail. All exams are scored the same way. First-time takers and repeat takers are graded to the same standard.


What is statistical equating?


For subsequent administrations of the exam, statistical equating is used to ensure that this level of performance is consistent across multiple administrations of that exam. Essentially, this means that while the numerical passing score may change with each administration, you are not disadvantaged when one administration of a particular exam is more difficult than another. This process accounts for the 8- to 10-week interval between an exam administration and the release of scores to member licensing boards.

 

[YAZRABADI]

I think they really gauge your understanding of the material. If you know your stuff, it will show, specially in the afternoon. I still dont know if they would forgive mistakes that are made that result in you taking a different path than the correct method. For that reason, I am not getting my hopes up. I know what to do if I get not acceptable. You should be able to gauge you performance and know exactly where you screwed up, so next time to prevent falling for the same trick. We will all see what happens once the results come out. Good luck to all.

 

[OHBridgeGuy]

Bridge lateral taker here, 2nd time.  I thought the morning was much harder than my first go with a lot of curve balls.  I did the school of PE course and prepped on a number of review questions and there were a lot from left field.  Both in the bridge section, with just odd situations and things I have never seen in practice before, and on the building side.  

The afternoon questions were not horrible, but were strange.  Both times I have taken this I have encountered things in the afternoon that you would never actually do in practice with factors like hinging or size variability.

Bridge vertical and lateral, first time here too.

There were definitely a lot of curveball questions -- just unusual circumstances to apply the concepts. A couple of AM questions were tough for me (having never done those particular types of projects before), and the vertical afternoon questions weren't quite what I expected (though not too bad in the end -- as long as I didn't overlook some obscure code provision). I also felt the time crunch, which isn't usually an issue when I take tests.

I also thought there might have been a typo on an AM seismic question that had a very low design parameter... or maybe I just messed up the code minimums. Who knows?

I was definitely thankful to be taking Bridges instead of Buildings. I didn't think the 2hr problems really took that long, so I was able to reallocate some extra time into the two shorter problems.

 

Yes, the first question for me definitely had a typo.  I worked it both ways, one with code minimums and the other if you move the decimal and moving the decimal gave exactly one of the answers.  There is nowhere that would have such a high Ss value and so low an S1 (I can't remember what was given but it was something to that effect).

There was another problem I was disappointed in that asked about bracing, but technically none of the answers were correct (did not meet provisions).  It was only after looking at it a while that I realized they were only asking about one provision, though that was not what the problem stated.

I definitely ran out of time on the morning section, whereas I had time to spare the first try on the lateral.