thomas02pe
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How I passed the Fall 2012 T&F Mechanical Exam:
For full disclosure I took this test twice, first time in April 2012 and the passing in October. Although I discount the first one because of my complete lack of preparation….you know all the excuses. Traveling a ton for work, a crazy relationship bla blab la.
Second time around however I can offer up some tips that might help you folks. I’ll try and walk through some of important stuff:
First I read the forums on here titled “How I passed” and got a bunch of ideas. I remember MapuaTech saying things like “do every problem” a hundred times etc. So that inspired me a bit.
For books I had the MERM, Lindberg’s Practice Problems, the NCEES T&F Sample Exam, 6 Min Solutions HVAC ( I heard the T&F wasn’t worth the time with all the errors) and Bell’s HVAC Equations, Data and Rules of Thumb.
I started 4 months out and as test day approached I increased the intensity. At the height of my studying I was doing 4 hours every weekday and more on weekends. I decided to do every practice problem in Linberg’s 500 problem book, and really focus on the HVAC and Fluids. So that took me the entire 4 months, I even did the ones that had the “one hour” time limit that are so tempting to skip.
While I was doing this I created a binder with the MERM appendix and a bunch of equations and quick cut stuff that I found myself struggling with. This was incredibly helpful and I used it extensively during the exam. It was tabbed and I knew where everything was located from memory. While working the 500 problems I also tabbed the MERM and the other books.
As test day approached I did all the fluids/hvac/heat transfer problems again and took the NCEES practice test over and over. This gave me more confidence and increased my speed. You’ll notice that you’re slow as molasses until you do the problem 3 times and then you just breeze through without thinking.
Then on test day I was relaxed and worked the problems and felt way more confident than the first time. Preparation is everything, my only problem was that I did all the practice problems in US units and didn’t have a lot of SI experience. So during the test looking up the SI steam tables pissed me off because I didn’t have them in my binder and I ended up converting to US units and it slowed me down……so I would put a better mix in if I had to do it again.
Anyways good luck guys, just wanted to type this to give you some ideas on studying. Hope this helps!
For full disclosure I took this test twice, first time in April 2012 and the passing in October. Although I discount the first one because of my complete lack of preparation….you know all the excuses. Traveling a ton for work, a crazy relationship bla blab la.
Second time around however I can offer up some tips that might help you folks. I’ll try and walk through some of important stuff:
First I read the forums on here titled “How I passed” and got a bunch of ideas. I remember MapuaTech saying things like “do every problem” a hundred times etc. So that inspired me a bit.
For books I had the MERM, Lindberg’s Practice Problems, the NCEES T&F Sample Exam, 6 Min Solutions HVAC ( I heard the T&F wasn’t worth the time with all the errors) and Bell’s HVAC Equations, Data and Rules of Thumb.
I started 4 months out and as test day approached I increased the intensity. At the height of my studying I was doing 4 hours every weekday and more on weekends. I decided to do every practice problem in Linberg’s 500 problem book, and really focus on the HVAC and Fluids. So that took me the entire 4 months, I even did the ones that had the “one hour” time limit that are so tempting to skip.
While I was doing this I created a binder with the MERM appendix and a bunch of equations and quick cut stuff that I found myself struggling with. This was incredibly helpful and I used it extensively during the exam. It was tabbed and I knew where everything was located from memory. While working the 500 problems I also tabbed the MERM and the other books.
As test day approached I did all the fluids/hvac/heat transfer problems again and took the NCEES practice test over and over. This gave me more confidence and increased my speed. You’ll notice that you’re slow as molasses until you do the problem 3 times and then you just breeze through without thinking.
Then on test day I was relaxed and worked the problems and felt way more confident than the first time. Preparation is everything, my only problem was that I did all the practice problems in US units and didn’t have a lot of SI experience. So during the test looking up the SI steam tables pissed me off because I didn’t have them in my binder and I ended up converting to US units and it slowed me down……so I would put a better mix in if I had to do it again.
Anyways good luck guys, just wanted to type this to give you some ideas on studying. Hope this helps!
