October 2018 Exam - impressions

[ME_VT_PE]

I thought the AM section was really tough (way tougher than the NCEES practice exam) and was surprised to find the geotech section to be more manageable than the AM. The difficulty of the morning threw me off a bit. As for the afternoon, I also thought there were a lot of theory questions, most of which were pretty obscure. And I had to use my judgement on a few of them because the information provided in the question was either strange or lacking in some way. I also felt like there weren’t as many “traditional” geotech questions as I was expecting. All in all, maybe I’m just feeling the post-exam blues but I felt like it was harder than I was expecting. And I did really well on the practice exams (which I timed and tried to replicate testing conditions) but time will tell!

Well well well...look who it is.....

 

[PE 2018]

Well the more I think of it , the more mistakes I realize I made in the afternoon session. That being said I am hopeful of scoring 34 in the AM and 24 in the PM(Structural). Not sure that if 58 would be enough to pass. Do you think they will have separate cut offs for both sessions ? There are not many Structural users here , just trying to calm my nerves by posting here and getting some feedback

 

[Stardust]

There's no such thing as separate cut score.. I'm trying to plan for either way, and find something productive to do for a month

 

[GeoDude_PE]

Well the more I think of it , the more mistakes I realize I made in the afternoon session. That being said I am hopeful of scoring 34 in the AM and 24 in the PM(Structural). Not sure that if 58 would be enough to pass. Do you think they will have separate cut offs for both sessions ? There are not many Structural users here , just trying to calm my nerves by posting here and getting some feedback

If 58/80 doesn’t pass structural then the pass rate would be next to nothing..

 

[SDB]

Based on the comments posted, it seems most of us are in the same boat. Just curious...How many Geo’s out there think 54ish will be enough to pass?

 

[SDB]

Wow, no comments in almost two weeks...Geez!

 

[Dreameir]

I have a good feeling exam results will be coming out next week... (I'm betting on Dec 5!!)

I'm a first time taker, I took the School of PE live class, I started studying 2-3 weeks earlier than the start of the class, as well as took practice exams the last 2 weeks after the class was completed using other resources (EET, 6 minute solutions, and any other practice exams i could get my hands on).  The school of PE sorta gave you the false sense of confidence because the questions they would ask was easily found in the notes or tailored to the curriculum. So i really tried to stay away from it the last two weeks and work off of other questions. In total i want to say I studied a little over 3 months, 5 days a week for about 4 hours or more. I studied maybe 3-5 weekends out of the three months (while maintaining a full-time job).

I thought the first half of the exam was harder than the NCEES practice exam booklet. I thought it was going to be a little bit more straight forward but I definitely got stuck on a lot more questions than I thought. I want to say I was unsure about 10 of the questions. For some reason I felt like it was more structural emphasis (i felt that way on the afternoon portion as well). It seems like a lot of people felt the same way about the morning session though in terms of difficulty. 

I felt like the second part of the exam was fair on some questions, and a little "too focused" on other parts. I want to say I counted exactly half theoretical/conceptual/remediation problems and the other half were plug and chug type of questions. I believe that the plug and chug questions were meant to be easy and the other half was meant to really weed out the real "geotech" engineers out there. Some of the questions were meant for people with more experience, which I felt was a little unfair as you're allowed to take this exam fresh out of college. I have a master's in geotech and I didnt feel well prepared enough for a lot of those theoretical questions. Even after the exam, I felt like there was nothing I could of done to prepare for the exam even more because I was just not studying what they were asking at all.  I used the geotechnical engineering pocket handbook which came in really handy at making educated guesses lol. At this point I'm hoping my engineering judgement was enough to pass. 

I would not suggest buying the new CERM, i would use the index and find that the sections were not in the right pages (i feel like it was referencing the old CERM). Stick to the 15th edition. Not worth your money until they iron out all the kinks. 

Books I used:

School of PE depth section
CERM
Geotechnical Engineering Pocket handbook by Day
printed out the FE reference manual & wrote more equations in it so i didnt have to reference the CERM too much

I brought more books than that but these are literally the only ones I opened. Other books i brought: OSHA, soils book (holtz), foundations book (salgado), civil engineering dictionary,  and All School of PE notes.

Hoping luck is on all of our sides! 

 

[GeoDude_PE]

Completely agree with most of your analysis. The morning exam was tougher than I was expecting after taking multiple practice exams. A lot of theory even in the morning. I did PPI class and that did not fully prepare me for the exam. As for the afternoon, I agree that most of the calculation based problems were fairly straight forward and I believe that is where the majority of my points will come from. The conceptual problems were way too in depth. Some of the questions it didn't matter if you were a well rounded geotechnical engineer, if you don't live in an area where you perform seismic design you probably weren't going to have a clue on a few. The same could be said for some other afternoon topics.

All in all, we're a few weeks out from getting results. Let's hope for the best!

 

[SDB]

I realize that trying to anticipate what the cut score will be is probably an exercise in futility.  However, what number are you guys hoping for?

 

[SDB]

Even after the exam, I felt like there was nothing I could of done to prepare for the exam even more because I was just not studying what they were asking at all

Dreamier,

This is a very good assessment of the afternoon test.