Post Exam Period

[Engineerbabu]

I hope everyone did great on the Vertical portion yesterday and good luck to those writing Lateral essay right now. It is going to be equally difficult to wait for the results. Here is the summary of the past few years of exam dates and results. Take your time off from Structural Engineering for some time, even though the results will hunt us down. Stay safe!

Exam Date	PE result date	SE result date
April 15/16, 2016	May 19th	June 10th
April 21/22, 2017	May 25th	June 9th
April 13/14, 2018	May 24th	June 14th
April 5/6, 2019	May 14th	June 14th
April 22/23, 2021	(Maybe end of May)	(Maybe before June 14th)

 

[kevo_55]

Good luck everyone!

Remember not to talk about what was on the actual exam.

But please let everyone know if there was anyone who just "lost it" during your exam!!

 

[Be-n]

Forgive me if this question is not ethical or not within the NCEES rules.
Could anyone who took SE vertical in the past and took it again this spring provide some feedback about the consistency of difficulty of the exam? I mean do you feel like the difficulty of the exam is pretty consistent from year to year?

 

[Be-n]

Good luck everyone!

Remember not to talk about what was on the actual exam.

But please let everyone know if there was anyone who just "lost it" during your exam!!

I lost my patience the minute I realized I wrote my pm problem in a wrong pamphlet! I wasted 10 valuable minutes to copy 3 pages of solution to the right one . Such a silly mistake to make! I really needed these 10 minutes in my last problem to finish it neatly with a complete solution

 

[Engineerbabu]

I lost my patience the minute I realized I wrote my pm problem in a wrong pamphlet! I wasted 10 valuable minutes to copy 3 pages of solution to the right one . Such a silly mistake to make! I really needed these 10 minutes in my last problem to finish it neatly with a complete solution

I couldn't imagine a situation worse than that. I have taken Lateral last year and gravity this year and on both of those exams, I was calculating something that was already given on the question itself, wasting about 20 minutes on each exam.
I hope you will pass, I hope we all will pass. If you couldn't solve the full question but still managed to solve about 50-75% of the PM question you still can get IR (based on my previous experience).
I personally targeted solving 2 questions fully and 2 questions about 80% each this time, and that's all I could do. I definitely could have used 30 more minutes for PM and 15 more minutes for AM.
Good luck to everyone except those who hates Millerlite

 

[Be-n]

I couldn't imagine a situation worse than that. I have taken Lateral last year and gravity this year and on both of those exams, I was calculating something that was already given on the question itself, wasting about 20 minutes on each exam.
I hope you will pass, I hope we all will pass. If you couldn't solve the full question but still managed to solve about 50-75% of the PM question you still can get IR (based on my previous experience).
I personally targeted solving 2 questions fully and 2 questions about 80% each this time, and that's all I could do. I definitely could have used 30 more minutes for PM and 15 more minutes for AM.
Good luck to everyone except those who hates Millerlite

Thanks for the heads up! I
I also wasted about 10 minutes in AM for looking or solving for information that is already given in a couple of problems. Despite of that, I still managed to go over all problems with only a couple of tough choices I had to make.
I would not feel too bad to fail the exam if I am technically not ready. But failing it after studying so hard and being well prepared because of not paying attention to the little things like pamphlet number would hurt so much!

 

[Titleistguy]

Had a dude just straight back his stuff and walk out after about 90 mins in the am....

Best part was he came back in afternoon and did it again.

Kinda felt bad for him but you know sometimes you just really want a pink pencil.

 

[Engineerbabu]

In our room we had a dude who walked out of the exam 30 minutes earlier in the PM, he probably found the exam too easy or the opposite of that.
@Be-n That's exactly how I feel about failing the test. If one is ready to pass the test he/she probably will pass the test. That being said, it will add 6 more months of pain. I have been taking exams since October of 2019, and it feels like forever. We can complete Masters in 1 and a half years and there is literally no chance of failing in Masters if we put very little effort, however, these tests are very different. We can be stuck taking tests for years if things don't go the way we wanted. I completed MS in 15 months but licensing takes more effort and time. I took PE and SE lateral, fortunately, passed both of them and now waiting on Vertical result.
Also, I don't believe just passing the test will make us a better engineer, which means we need to continue studying for the rest of our career but that being said, having these exams passed will relieve a huge burden and provide us with the confidence to do daily engineering tasks.
Also @Be-n, I don't think we will ever be 100% ready for this test. It covers such a huge scope that's practically impossible to complete. I have about 3 years of work experience on the East Coast and haven't done many Seismic projects so when I prepared for Lateral, it literally took me 8-10 hours to understand the solution to some questions and we are supposed to do that within an hour in the exam. So if we get any questions that we haven't seen before, we fail.

 

[Be-n]

Had a dude just straight back his stuff and walk out after about 90 mins in the am....

Best part was he came back in afternoon and did it again.

Kinda felt bad for him but you know sometimes you just really want a pink pen

In our room we had a dude who walked out of the exam 30 minutes earlier in the PM, he probably found the exam too easy or the opposite of that.
@Be-n That's exactly how I feel about failing the test. If one is ready to pass the test he/she probably will pass the test. That being said, it will add 6 more months of pain. I have been taking exams since October of 2019, and it feels like forever. We can complete Masters in 1 and a half years and there is literally no chance of failing in Masters if we put very little effort, however, these tests are very different. We can be stuck taking tests for years if things don't go the way we wanted. I completed MS in 15 months but licensing takes more effort and time. I took PE and SE lateral, fortunately, passed both of them and now waiting on Vertical result.
Also, I don't believe just passing the test will make us a better engineer, which means we need to continue studying for the rest of our career but that being said, having these exams passed will relieve a huge burden and provide us with the confidence to do daily engineering tasks.
Also @Be-n, I don't think we will ever be 100% ready for this test. It covers such a huge scope that's practically impossible to complete. I have about 3 years of work experience on the East Coast and haven't done many Seismic projects so when I prepared for Lateral, it literally took me 8-10 hours to understand the solution to some questions and we are supposed to do that within an hour in the exam. So if we get any questions that we haven't seen before, we fail.

Thanks for sharing, 100% agree with everything.
However, I think studying for SE and passing it does make us a little better engineers because it makes us studying the topics that we would probably never touch (like aashto manual) in real life or do hand class for things we have not done since school.
After my first SE exam, I do have a lot more respect to those who have these letters after their names; Well, maybe not as much to those who got it though grandfathering process and not actual passing 16 hr exam.
I am in the same boat considering seismic. I am going to put a lot of effort into it to get to the point I feel good about the subject.

 

[organix]

Had a dude just straight back his stuff and walk out after about 90 mins in the am....

Best part was he came back in afternoon and did it again.

Kinda felt bad for him but you know sometimes you just really want a pink pencil.

Maybe he was just Uber efficient?

 

[organix]

I lost my patience the minute I realized I wrote my pm problem in a wrong pamphlet! I wasted 10 valuable minutes to copy 3 pages of solution to the right one . Such a silly mistake to make! I really needed these 10 minutes in my last problem to finish it neatly with a complete solution

Don’t beat yourself up too much. We probably all do some major time wasting one way or another... missing given info, calculating the wrong thing, etc. I figure most can afford one mess up like that and have enough time remaining to fix it.

 

[EBAT75]

Don’t beat yourself up too much. We probably all do some major time wasting one way or another... missing given info, calculating the wrong thing, etc. I figure most can afford one mess up like that and have enough time remaining to fix it.

Can one still get a passing grade if it is not found to fix it?

 

[Titleistguy]

Maybe he was just Uber efficient?

No one is that efficient.

 

[organix]

Can one still get a passing grade if it is not found to fix it?

I think that would depend on the severity of the mistake made. The work won’t need to be perfect, but it probably needs to be on the right track to not lose major points. We’re a bit in the dark on how they grade so it’s hard to say.

 

[Be-n]

I think that would depend on the severity of the mistake made. The work won’t need to be perfect, but it probably needs to be on the right track to not lose major points. We’re a bit in the dark on how they grade so it’s hard to say.

Based on all forum readings, I came to conclusion that you need two 100% completed problems (maybe some minor mistakes not affecting shown methodology are ok) and two problems at least 75% completed to get A-A-IR-IR and be able to pass if AM score is good.
But hey, this is my first time and have no clue how they grade it as well. So, don’t quote me

 

[Titleistguy]

Based on all forum readings, I came to conclusion that you need two 100% completed problems (maybe some minor mistakes not affecting shown methodology are ok) and two problems at least 75% completed to get A-A-IR-IR and be able to pass if AM score is good.
But hey, this is my first time and have no clue how they grade it as well. So, don’t quote me

I'll say this --- there were questions from lateral when I took it last that I was SURE would be failed, b/c I had only completed maybe 2 of 5 parts completely and had to outline the rest, and got IR on those, (which to me falls below the 75% standard you mention). So I beleive that numbers mean far less and process means far more than what people think.

 

[EBAT75]

I'll say this --- there were questions from lateral when I took it last that I was SURE would be failed, b/c I had only completed maybe 2 of 5 parts completely and had to outline the rest, and got IR on those, (which to me falls below the 75% standard you mention). So I beleive that numbers mean far less and process means far more than what people think.

Yes, this is our guessing game now. I have seen detailed grading criteria for each problem in the rather old sample exams. Reading those gives me a good idea of how they expect a problem to be approached by it being broken down into a step-by-step approach. Each step I expect has different weight depending on how critical it is. The resulting score for a problem is not that much of a qualitative nature.

I can only surmise that kind of approach is still used. Just that the recent issues of Sample exam and Solutions don’t give such grading criteria.

I think the process may not be very transparent but I have confidence in it. And as I have said before, a bad doctor can end up killing one person/patient at a time; a bad structural engineer even dozens in one fell swoop.

 

[GataGunna]

Welp. Back to lurking on this forum and waking up in the middle of the night because I suddenly remember something I screwed up.

 

[EBAT75]

Welp. Back to lurking on this forum and waking up in the middle of the night because I suddenly remember something I screwed up.

Was it on wood screws?

 

[organix]

Based on all forum readings, I came to conclusion that you need two 100% completed problems (maybe some minor mistakes not affecting shown methodology are ok) and two problems at least 75% completed to get A-A-IR-IR and be able to pass if AM score is good.
But hey, this is my first time and have no clue how they grade it as well. So, don’t quote me

Yea, the question though would be what exactly earns a score of the 75%. Knowing exactly what the graders want it the tough part.