Kaplan sample exams?

[Matt-NM]

Has anybody taken the Kaplan sample PE exams? I will be taking the Mechanical PE in April. Since I used the NCEES sample exam more as study problems, I would really like an actual practice exam in addition to the Lindeburg exam that I will be taking within a few weeks. I could have sworn I read somewhere that people were not recommending the Kaplan exams for various reasons but don't remember specifics.

Can anybody recommend the Kaplan exams?

Thanks.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

People usually don't recommend the Kaplan exam because they are much harder than the actual NCEES test, and they have a slightly different format. As for the format, they have problems that build on each other (i.e. the answer to one question may be needed to get the correct answer for the next problem). I just took the Electrial Kaplan exam, and I kinda like them. It equates to a baseball player warming up with a weighted bat. If you can work and understand the Kaplan problems, it makes the NCEES problems seem easy.

 

[homer]

This may be of no use to you, but: I purchased the Kaplan series for the Electrical PE. Overall I would not recommend it to anyone. I found that the format used was unlike anything ive seen or heard of. I spent more time trying to figure out what they were talking about mroe than how to solve the problem. I did use the reference book for about 2 or 3 exam questions. Hope this helps.

-homer

 

[Matt-NM]

Thanks for the tips. Sounds like my time would be better spent working more problems from MERM, six-minute, and NCEES rather than the Kaplan.

 

[rktatum24]

I took that Kaplan Civil Exam during my prep for the PE and I thought it was very good when comparing to the "the other board" sample exam and the NCEES sample exam. I thought the "the other board" sample exam was a little too time consuming to be realistic for the morning portion. I also did not like the fact the the afternoon section for the "the other board" exam was not the same format as the actual exam. The "the other board" afternoon section had 40 straight topic (i.e. transpo, geotech, etc) problems. It did not have the problems from other topics that will be on the actual afternoon exam. For example, I took the transpo afternoon and was expecting to see 26 transpo problems, 8 water problems, and 6 geotech problems; but the "the other board" exam had 40 straight transpo problems. I thought the NCEES sample exam was very good, a must have, but it only had 20 morning problems and 20 afternoon problems, so I couldn't get a true 8 hr practice exam from it. The Kaplan exam was difficult, but not as unrealistic as the "the other board" exam and it also was presented in the actual format you will see on the PE exam. I would recommend the Kaplan exam to anyone who wants to take a pretty realistic 8hr sample exam. If you perform well on it, you are probably in good shape for the exam.