ME PE Exam-What did you think?

[krenim]

I took the Mechanical Systems and Materials PM session. Funny, but I thought the AM had way more Thermo, heat transfer, and HVAC than Machine design! I guess it's a matter of perspective.

I felt pretty good about the test for the most part, but time killed me. I was 1/2 hour ahead of schedule mid way through, then stalled out on a problem with a wonky unit given, wasting my cushion on a problem I was certain I could get. Now I'm kicking myself because I made a stupid mistake on the conversion, so I got it wrong anyway, and then ended up having to make an educated guess on about 4 problems at the end.

Ended up pressed for time in the PM session too, but felt good about everything I worked through (except one ambiguously worded question). Had to guess on 3 at the end.

I actually thought the test was easier than I expected, but took a lot of reading between the lines to not waste time on distracting info. Of course I could have gotten every thing wrong too, so we'll see in a couple of months.

References used: MERM - extensively, Shigley - some, Marks - twice maybe?, Machinery's - once?, Mech of Mat'l text - twice, Cameron Hydraulic data - twice.

 

[ck_b2001]

I have slightly different feeling about the exam. I found the exam to be well balanced for what they said in the new distribution effective Oct 2008. This was my first time taking PE and i took the Machine Design Depth. The AM was pretty straight forward with may be 4-5 tough questions which i was able to handle in the 2nd round. Marks Handbook really came handy for unusual ones. Unless i totally missed the point and selected logical distractors, allmost all the answers matched.

The M/C Design depth was also very well balanced. There were handful of easy questions to give you more time on tough ones. There were more questions on fundamentals but that's what new distribution was all about. There were few questions which i knew i was doing right but the answers did not match exactly. There were lot of unit conversions and some tricky questions that can lead to wrong answer that still matches one of the choices. I had studied for 14 weeks, solved NCEES sample exam, Linderburg Sample Exam, 6 Min solution. There were handful of questions very similar to the ones i had solved in MERM, 6 Min and Sample exams.

Unless the exam was overly trying to lead you to wrong answer, i am feeling good about it but still i will give myself 80/20 chance of passing/not passing. I am avoiding discussing specific details but i am really curious as to what area most people found more difficult.

 

[MechGuy]

I took the HVAC depth. Like the others, I thought the morning session was particularly easy, and was done early. I thought it was easier than previous exams, but I thought maybe that was because I had studied quite a bit more this time around.

The afternoon session still kicked my ass though. A couple of questions I just plain couldnt answer because I either didnt have the right reference with me, or didn't know where to look.

But overall I think I did well enough this time to pass.

 

[jbestrella]

I took the HVAC depth too. I was able to complete the morning sessions around 10:00 but consumed the 4 hours in the afternoon. Too many given but you can answer it by directly substituting to an equation. But there is one question that doesn't have enough information, so I just guess. You need to have all the four ASHRAE handbooks and ASHRAE Standard 90 to answer some of the questions. I felt good when I came out of the exam room.