Oct 2015

[louisianapipeline]

Looks good GB! This should be the one!

 

[sunguy]

I realized over weekend that I made math errors on 2 questions. Does the board care about the approach to solve the problem? Or is it just the final answer?

 

[NJmike PE]

Good Morning Friends,

This was my second time taking the Civil exam. Last April I took the Construction depth after someone suggested it to me for my line of work, and I did very poor. I scored around 58% and did worse in the afternoon. For that exam I studied around 40 hours of lecture (Testmasters On-Demand), and about 20 hours of problems (two practice test). I was not heavily invested as I went offshore quite a bit during this time.

After the exam was worried sick for a month. I knew in my heart the only way I could have passed was from the grace of God. Basically Divine intervention. I failed of course, which did not surprise me. It was difficult.

I took the advice of many folks on the EB and switched to Water Resources. (I do some pipeline design). I also went the route of doing EET's review with Dr. Nazrul. It was the best study experience I've ever had.

His depth review was phenomenal.

During the morning sessions, I finished with about 30-40mins left, and checked my work. I found an error and changed it. I also was able to go through to count what I felt strong about. Here was my break down:

30 Questions - I felt comfortable I got right or knew how to work

6 Questions - I was able to remove 1-2 answers from to guess

4 Questions - I guessed outright

Not a bad breakdown. I felt pretty good at lunch.

During the afternoon It was relatively similar.

30-32 Questions - I felt comfortable with

4 Questions - I removed two choices and guessed

4 Questions - I had to throw out a hail mary answer

I had about 15mins left in the afternoon, and again checked my work and used the time to try and find any reference in my CERM.

I left the exam happy, satisfied. I reviewed the Test Masters morning classes, which helped. I put in close to 300-400 hours since mid-july. I likely worked 500-600 problems, and did a very accurate simulated exam the week prior to really pin point my strong points.

The questions were tough, but luckily I was able to find a lot of the critical thinking questions in my notes from one of the exam reviews.

I never want to feel confident and overlook, but I feel good and am excited to see the results. Here's to praying still!

I do want to give another thanks to Dr. Nazrul (very accurate review) and the EB guys. (NJMike, Ram, etc) Your support and comments after my defeat last April helped a lot. I hope to rejoice this time.

Side Note: Saturday I was beyond sloshed.

nice job, LP. Sounds like a good report.

 

[itinerant]

I realized over weekend that I made math errors on 2 questions. Does the board care about the approach to solve the problem? Or is it just the final answer?

Just the final answer. The winner takes it all, the runner-up, the third and fourth ....well all are losers for the board.

Don't ponder over the exam anymore, or else by time of the results, you will end up convincing yourself, all the questions you attempted were wrong in some way. Please don't.

 

[DontStopBelieving]

Took HVAC PM portion. The exam in total was way more challenging than NCEES 2011 practice exam but not as difficult as PPI's practice exam (which I took 2 days before the real thing). My area of specialty should obviously be HVAC and heat and mass transfer. So when I saw the first three questions on the morning exam, I had a painful flashback and thought it was PPI's practice exam all over. I was only able to answer 18 out of 40 correctly on that exam and overall got a 57%, which shook me up seriously! However, the real exam on Friday thankfully wasn't as difficult; and thankfully the morning session had a more than fair share of HVAC questions that helped me tremendously!

Can't wait til December though. Feel like hunting my exam down!!!! ah!!!

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

Anyone on here take HVAC afternoon? I'd love to hear your thoughts

I took the HVAC afternoon... #Challenge. Was mad about electrical question showing up on the PM section though. I had to guess on about 4 or 5. Heat transfer problems took me for a loop. Who calculates composite wall systems by hand anyways????

Composite wall problems should not take that long to calculate once you set up your thermal circuit equation.

 

[John QPE]

30 Questions - I felt comfortable I got right or knew how to work

6 Questions - I was able to remove 1-2 answers from to guess

4 Questions - I guessed outright

Not a bad breakdown. I felt pretty good at lunch.

During the afternoon It was relatively similar.

30-32 Questions - I felt comfortable with

4 Questions - I removed two choices and guessed

4 Questions - I had to throw out a hail mary answer

That's a winner and you know it.

 

[DontStopBelieving]

Anyone on here take HVAC afternoon? I'd love to hear your thoughts

I took the HVAC afternoon... #Challenge. Was mad about electrical question showing up on the PM section though. I had to guess on about 4 or 5. Heat transfer problems took me for a loop. Who calculates composite wall systems by hand anyways????

Composite wall problems should not take that long to calculate once you set up your thermal circuit equation.

True... I just botched the hell out of them... And ended up taking educated guesses based on knowledge of thermal resistance of an item... Glad there were only a few though.

All in all I felt good. Would be devastated (like everybody else) if I fail though. I studied like a madman since labor day. Like a minimum of 5 hours per weekday and probably like 14 hours on the weekend. Nearly 40 hours per week while working full time! I'd be crushed if I fail!

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

30 Questions - I felt comfortable I got right or knew how to work

6 Questions - I was able to remove 1-2 answers from to guess

4 Questions - I guessed outright

Not a bad breakdown. I felt pretty good at lunch.

During the afternoon It was relatively similar.

30-32 Questions - I felt comfortable with

4 Questions - I removed two choices and guessed

4 Questions - I had to throw out a hail mary answer

That's a winner and you know it.

If that breakdown is conservative, looks like a sure bet you passed.

 

[matt267 PE]

Are the results out yet?

 

[NJmike PE]

where's the 10K?

 

[matt267 PE]

I think it's finished already.

 

[P-E]

Damn I was hoping for back to back wins

 

[NJmike PE]

In all honesty guys (people) you will all have plenty of time to think, overthink and convince yourselves that you either passed or failed. I know that it sounds easy for my to say, but walk away. Detach yourselves from this exam and go back to your families, find a hobby and take a deep breath. You all have gone through a huge mental exercise. Give yourselves a break. Should you end up being one of the failures when the results are released in 2+ months, remember that it's not the end of the world. Much greater tragedies have occurred. If you have to give up another 3 months of your life, it will only be a small price to pay for your future. So, take some time to enjoy life and give yourselves a pat on the back for getting this far.

 

[Foozballd53]

Took the Civil/Transpo Depth. Morning session was not what I expected at all. Thought that at least 30% of the session involved concepts that required more than a "breadth" knowledge of civil engineering. I still think I did "ok" but it wasn't anything like the practice exams I took (lindeburg, goswami, ncees and mikes morning). On the problems I didn't know - coming up with an answer was more about eliminating wrong answers. Scouring the CERM for clues on the right one was near impossible.

I'd be curious to see what geotech and water resources folks thought of the morning, as just about everyone I talked to was pretty frustrated after the morning except for one of my buddies who now specializes in WR/Geotech.

As for the afternoon, I think I did pretty well - but I would say being familiar with the resources (Green Book, MUTCD, HCM and Roadside Design Guide) was a necessity. The problems were not easy, but at least coming up with a confident answer was possible if you knew where to look, whereas in the morning I was convinced at times that NCEES was making up words.

Also had a guy with a leaf blower during the morning. Pretty sure he duct taped it on and left it right outside the window while he took a 45 minute poop break... Just glad i had earplugs.

Fooz,

I was a WRE depth and I agree with you that the morning seemed to have some unexpected questions.

Edit:

It's somewhat comforting to know that I'm not the only one to have trouble in the AM. Hopefully this helps the bell curve in our favor.

so you're saying that the cut score will be low then?

NJMike,

Not sure how that works. I've talked to about 10 people and only one felt good about the morning.

Which means either one of two things:

1) We are just being pessimistic because we didn't hit home runs on the breadth portion like the thought we would (Very likely)

or

2) NCEES will have to do something to the cut score to make sure the passing rate is respectable.

Either way, it's over - now it's time to drink a few beers and laugh at each other's freak out moments over the next 8 weeks.

 

[matt267 PE]

.... it's time to drink a few beers and laugh at each other's freak out moments over the next 8 weeks.

You're going to fit in nicely around here.

 

[NJmike PE]

 

[matt267 PE]

^ me trying to study.

 

[Patrick1441 PE]

Civil/Construction first attempt here.

Like many, I felt the Civil morning had a few curve balls. The best strategy for me was to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each session and read the questions in their entirety and rank them 1) I've got this 2) I've probably got this but it will take some time and 3) WTF. By waiting until the end to do the "WTF" questions I actually was able to figure a few of them out with no pressure, knowing I could always fill them in with guesses if I didn't get them. I feel like I probably punted a couple of them but I had logic behind the guesses I had to make.

The Construction afternoon was exactly in line with what I studied thankfully, with a fair share of problems coming straight from the suggested references. I used the same strategy as I did in the morning and didn't have to classify any as "WTF" questions thankfully. A few questions did take some time to chug out after I got the easy look-up questions out of the way. By prioritizing the work I ended up with a few minutes at the end to double check and second guess myself a bit here and there. I'd definitely recommend using this strategy.

I either did really well or really awful, depending on how malicious they were with the distractor answers!

 

[AK Eyes]

Anyone on here take HVAC afternoon? I'd love to hear your thoughts

I took the HVAC afternoon... #Challenge. Was mad about electrical question showing up on the PM section though. I had to guess on about 4 or 5. Heat transfer problems took me for a loop. Who calculates composite wall systems by hand anyways????

Composite wall problems should not take that long to calculate once you set up your thermal circuit equation.

True... I just botched the hell out of them... And ended up taking educated guesses based on knowledge of thermal resistance of an item... Glad there were only a few though.

All in all I felt good. Would be devastated (like everybody else) if I fail though. I studied like a madman since labor day. Like a minimum of 5 hours per weekday and probably like 14 hours on the weekend. Nearly 40 hours per week while working full time! I'd be crushed if I fail!

Glad I'm not the only one that thought it was hard. I ended up guessing on a simple heat transfer problem too. It wasn't that the problem was difficult I just could not for the life of me find all the R-Values and film coefficients needed to solve the problem. I've figured out 6 problems I got wrong in the afternoon... electrical being one of em....