How confident are you?

Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum

Help Support Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
M

Max Power

So... how confident are you that you passed the PE exam? To those of you that have taken it before, how confident where you after the last time you took it?

I took the Civil/Structural test (first time). I was probably 85% sure I passed as I walked out of the exam room. But after reworking the problems I could remember over the last week, my confidence level has dropped to about 60%. :(

Is it January yet? :ruh:

 
WELL......First time....I felt like if I got a little lucky, I would pass. I didn't get lucky, it looked like I got around 49-50 correct by the analysis report.

Second Time.....I was CERTAIN that I had passed, I felt much better than I did on the first try, and after all, I only needed a couple more correct and I would have passed, it looked as if I got around 50-51 correct by the analysis report.

Third Time.....I feel like I did about the same as the second time, and we see where that got me....?

In April, I had several friends that took it at the same time, and they ALL felt like they DIDN't pass....but One DID. So I guess you never know, it depends on how well you paid attention to the questions, and if you REALLY did get those correct that you thought you got correct.

I ALREADY know that one I was sure about, I went back last week to look it up again, and I missed an important piece of the question, and missed the answer, so you'll just have to wait and see, that's the FUN of it all. Hopefully you won't have to do it multiple times like myself.

 
I passed in April '06 (WR PM) and felt pretty confident after taking it. I remember thinking to myself that "there must be some curveballs here that I'm not catching" because I thought the questions were really straight forward.

 
I felt good walking out, and still feel the same:

Morning done & checked in 3 hrs

Afternoon 2.5 hrs

guessed on maybe 6 or so questions (did not have the codes I needed)

I figure a min of 60 correct...

but you NEVER know until the 'letter' arrives....

 
I feel ya art...i got done early in both and i feel that I smoked it. there were only 3 of 80 I had to guess on, so that makes me feel pretty good...

 
I honestly don't know. This was my first time, so I don't have anything to compare the exam with. To be honest...I feel about 55%-60% confident that I did not pass. However, depending on the cut score, and if I get lucky on some of my guesses, I might have got enough correctly.

There weren't THAT many that I simply had to guess on. On several of my guesses, I feel that I was able to eliminate at least a few of the choices, at least increasing the probability I selected the correct choice. It is very hard to tell. I had a similar feeling after leaving the FE/EIT exam...and I passed with a reasonable margin, so it might be the same case this time.

There were also a group of questions in the afternoon that gave me some problems, so that might also be skewing my opinion negatively. However, at this point, I simply don't know. Like I said...personally, I feel it will be based on the cut score.

 
I took transpo in April and felt horrible about it. I failed miserably. This time (transpo, again) I felt much better about it. With a little luck, I'll pass. The first time, I did hardly no practice problems. That all I did this time. I've got a better chance at this one, but you never know until that fateful day. :prayers:

 
My first page of the exam was something so obscene , so grotesque, that decorum prohibits it from being mentioned here, it killed my AM confidence, so I quickly skipped it. I honestly dont have any realy feeling whatsoever, I used every bit of the 4 hours for each section this time, I recall finishing early last time and checking answers in my head, counting how many I thought I got correct, etc. this time I didnt have any time to do any early finish grandstanding...

 
Nice Animal House reference. While I don't feel that I achieved a ZERO POINT ZERO....I do not feel confident that I am at the head of the Delta Class either.

Why Pinto?....why not!?!

 
I should never have started wandering around this message board, I left the exam feeling I nailed it, and now after reading some posts of people feeling like the passed it before but didnt I'm starting to second guess myself!! :(

I guess I've got a question for those that have taken it before and thought they passed but didn't: Was it a kind of "I think I might have known just enough to pass that thing" or was it more of a "There were only a few problems I wasn't sure how to do, but I understood and worked through and got answers for the rest of them"?

Sorry that was long winded, wasn't it? I still feel pretty certain I did well, I just didn't spend my time counting up the number of problems I was SURE I did correctly, that and the fact that I can barely recall a handfull of problems from the exam! It just worries me that 95% of the quantitative problems seemed VERY straightforward with mostly 1 step solutions (took PM Transpo).

Thanks guys! :D

 
problems I was SURE I did correctly
I don't mean to be negative, but can any of us really be absolutely sure about any of the NCEES questions? I think all we can be sure about is that we got an answer that was one of the choices. That doesn't really mean much. We can be really super pretty sure, but positive? Maybe on some of them. People that were sure they passed, but failed, we probably positive about many of the questions that they wound up missing.

I don't mean for this post to be a downer. If you were really confident coming out of the exam, don't let anybody else's feelings about how they did affect your outlook. There's no use second guessing yourself until you get a "failed" notice in the mail. Then you can do some self evaluation and try to see where you were out of touch.

 
I feel I got 25 or 26 in the morning for sure. How good would I have to do in the afternoon to pass? How bad of a score is 25 or 26 in the morning. This wondering is really killing me.

 
biggs3,

when I took the exam in April, I left there feeling SURE of about 48 questions, using my percentage breakdown, I actually got about 10 less than that, let alone getting any good guesses.

I have two theories:

1. I was extremely dilusional and had no idea how bad I really did

2. I messed up my bubbles on my scantron.

I truely think that it was more of theory #2, because on the drive home from that April test I started thinking I may have messed up my afternoon answer sheet, and put it off as being paranoid.

This time, I went back and checked the circles in the booklet to make sure the answers corresponded to my bubble sheet.

 
I walked out in april early thinking I had kicked its ass!! but was sadly mistaken and got only 45 right. I was sure I had doen better than that. I walked out hits time using all my time to slow down and reallly read the question. I don't feel as confident this time but don't know if its because of this test or because I got slammed last time????

 
I walked out in april early thinking I had kicked its ass!! but was sadly mistaken and got only 45 right.
Ugh... thats why I can't be confident in passing. I only had to guess at 5 or 6, but I'm worried that I might have fallen for a bunch of trick questions like you apparently did. I used all of my "extra" time to try to figure out the few I didn't get on the first pass. I now wish I would have used that time to review all of my answers. Oh well... <_<

 
This thread is making me feel not so confident.

Like others here I felt pretty good when I left. There were only a few I didn't know and all the rest I was able to work out an answer for. Like Max Power I spent all my extra time trying to figure out ones I didn't get the first time rather than checking my answers.

I'm especially nervous because on one question that I had got an answer for I realized that the units they specified (in parentheses) were different then the units used throughout the question. Both answers were given. How many of those did I miss because I didn't check??

 
I realized that the units they specified (in parentheses) were different then the units used throughout the question. Both answers were given. How many of those did I miss because I didn't check??
I'm still having that dream every night :true:

 
This thread is making me feel not so confident. Like others here I felt pretty good when I left. There were only a few I didn't know and all the rest I was able to work out an answer for. Like Max Power I spent all my extra time trying to figure out ones I didn't get the first time rather than checking my answers.

I'm especially nervous because on one question that I had got an answer for I realized that the units they specified (in parentheses) were different then the units used throughout the question. Both answers were given. How many of those did I miss because I didn't check??
There's no way to tell and second guessing yourself for the next 7-10 weeks will drive you nuts. You could very well be worrying for no reason though, no sense getting worked up about it until you fail.

I don't know if my strategy ultimately worked or not (I took the MEPE)but I concentrated on each question one at a time and tried to be very very certain I was using the correct units and finding what they were actually asking for in the problem statement. I skipped hard or long problems entirely and left them until the end. This allowed me to be very confident of those problems I actually worked out a numerical answer for because I was conscious of the unit trickery. I'm not second guessing any of my answers for that reason. My doubt comes from the large number of problems I had left over at the end. I worked right up till the "buzzer" in the morning and the afternoon and I had to guess on a lot more questions than I wanted to because I was running out of time.

Just going from my fuzzy, blurred, soup brain memory, I can only be "sure" of about 40 answers. That leaves a ton of room for error on the other half of the exam. Some of that other half I'm fairly sure about, but a bunch of them were just educated guesses, especially the non-quantitative questions.

When I took the practice exam, I flew through it and felt pretty damn confident. Then I graded it. (failed) I missed many problems because I was working too fast, not reading the problems thoroughly, and jumped on the first answer I got on the calculator screen just because it was one of the choices. In hindsight, I may very well have overcompensated for that during the real exam and might have taken too much time.

My only advice is to try your best to find something else to concentrate on until the results come in. Worrying isn't going to do you any good, even though I know it's hard to put the test in the back of your mind somehow. For me, the best thing mentally was to just assume I failed and prepare to take it again in April. That way, when I get a passing letter in Dec. or Jan. it'll be that much sweeter.

:dunno:

 
Back
Top