It is my understanding with the civil exams, each discipline will have a different cut score. Transportation afternoon will have a different cut score than structural, who will be different than construction. it was stated to me that these can range from 51/80 to 58/80. Me personally, the April exam was my second attempt at the exam. I failed both times, but at my own stubbornness, as I have always just relied on my personal knowledge for most thing I have done professionally. I received my degree in structural and work in geotechnical, thanks to the downfall in the economy after graduating. I still want to excel at structural and have taken this test both times. the only preparation i did was a refresher course, no extra studying. Family commitments and work make this difficult. I know now i need to change this approach for my final attempt. The April test appeared to have a higher difficulty level to me when I was taking it, but my scores improved. Following are my morning to afternoon total breakdowns:
October 2013- 26/40 in the AM 15/40 in the PM, 41/80 total. April 2014- 32/40 in the AM 17/40 in the PM, 49/80 total.
My point here may be to not stress on how close you have been or not. It does suck to fail. If you did, let me pass on knowledge I have learned from my failures. Do not think you can accomplish a passing score by working in the field of study alone. I do not work in the field on which I tested and it shows that I did not prepare properly. The refresher course was very insightful to the morning problems, but the lack of preparation for the afternoon and trying to rely on personal experience and hoping to remember information from school will come back to get you. The references listed for the exam are good to become acquainted with and know how to use them. Many of the questions for the structural portion will relate to these and if you do not work in your discipline or use these references, you will be wasting valuable time on the exam. My new approach will be to learn these references or find a position within a hiring company to get better understanding of the references. It appears that even if you may know a way to solve a specific problem, it does not meet the guidelines of the reference the exam specified you to use and you solved correctly, but with the wrong approach, hence no credit.
As i did not do any studying outside of the refresher course, if anyone that has taken and passed the civil structural afternoon exam and can pass on some good pointers or study techniques, I would be grateful. I plan to wait until April of 2015 to retake again to make sure I spend time getting properly prepared this time instead of relying on experience and current knowledge.