Practice Exam Difficulty

[cornsnicker3]

If the SlaythePE practice exam is royaling beating me up, this more indicative of my lack of preparedness or the difficulty of the practice exam?

 

[cornsnicker3]

If the SlaythePE practice exam is royaling beating me up, this more indicative of my lack of preparedness or the difficulty of the practice exam?

*is this...

 

[Slay the P.E.]

If the SlaythePE practice exam is royaling beating me up, this more indicative of my lack of preparedness or the difficulty of the practice exam?

Cornsnicker3:

Our intent was to make it a little bit harder than the NCEES practice exam, but still not too hard so that the problems were absurdly long or complicated, which we thought would not be valuable.
 
However, the feedback we’ve received in private from our customers as well as in public via EngineerBoards from people who took it last October is that our exam is very close in difficulty and style to the actual exam. 
 
We hope that was helpful. 
 
Needless to say we are looking forward to the opinions of other forum members here.
 
Best,

 

[Sheshtawy]

If the SlaythePE practice exam is royaling beating me up, this more indicative of my lack of preparedness or the difficulty of the practice exam?

Probably lack of preparedness. But it's alright, you still have plenty of time to revisit the sections you're struggling with. The practice exam is very close in difficulty to the actual exam, except for a couple of heat exchanger problems which were just a bit too much.

 

[Vel2018]

If the SlaythePE practice exam is royaling beating me up, this more indicative of my lack of preparedness or the difficulty of the practice exam?

Yes just probably more practice, I am going to take the TFS Exam this April as well. 

I looked into the Slay The PE TFS Sample Problems(The Free TFS Sample Problems Posted On their website) and I could answer them right away after reading the question(most by just using my calculator since most data are given) I am planning to buy the complete set in case I run out of problems prior to test date. I think the practice problems of SlayThePE is like a more detailed version of the NCEES practice test,  the difficulty is about the same with the NCEES Practice Test. 

I got lucky I got my hands on the 2001 NCEES Practice Test for $150. Its very hard to find. 

 

[cornsnicker3]

Probably lack of preparedness. But it's alright, you still have plenty of time to revisit the sections you're struggling with. The practice exam is very close in difficulty to the actual exam, except for a couple of heat exchanger problems which were just a bit too much.

Here is what is interesting. For just about all of the subjects, it is hit or miss if I "get" the problem. It doesn't seem like any one area is especially bad for me. It is like me being 50% with all of the subjects. I just received the Companion Problems to the MERM so I hope to seal up my understanding with those problems.

 

[Sheshtawy]

Here is what is interesting. For just about all of the subjects, it is hit or miss if I "get" the problem. It doesn't seem like any one area is especially bad for me. It is like me being 50% with all of the subjects. I just received the Companion Problems to the MERM so I hope to seal up my understanding with those problems.

Well, that sounds like you need to solve more practice problems to complement your understanding of the topics. The MERM Companion should help immensely with that! 

 

[sambisu]

I just downloaded and printed out the Slay the PE practice exam and will be starting in on that this week. If I purchase the solutions, am I able to print them out or can they only be viewed digitally? I see they require a special PDF reader (which I won't be able to install on my work computer). So I was hoping I'd be able to print the whole thing and keep it at work with the rest of my study materials.

 

[Slay the P.E.]

I just downloaded and printed out the Slay the PE practice exam and will be starting in on that this week. If I purchase the solutions, am I able to print them out or can they only be viewed digitally? I see they require a special PDF reader (which I won't be able to install on my work computer). So I was hoping I'd be able to print the whole thing and keep it at work with the rest of my study materials.

Yes. You can absolutely print them out.

Thanks!

 

[cornsnicker3]

Probably lack of preparedness. But it's alright, you still have plenty of time to revisit the sections you're struggling with. The practice exam is very close in difficulty to the actual exam, except for a couple of heat exchanger problems which were just a bit too much.

When you say that the heat exchanger problems were too much, do you mean that for the actual exam or for the Slay the PE exam being too much?

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

Created to clean up SlayThePE exam questions.  Also, please use this thread to discuss all practice exam difficulty issues going forward.

Thanks.

 

[Sheshtawy]

When you say that the heat exchanger problems were too much, do you mean that for the actual exam or for the Slay the PE exam being too much?

Slay the PE questions were more difficult than the real exam for that particular topic

 

[sambisu]

I'm only 14 questions in to the Slay the PE practice exam, but it seems noticeably more difficult that the NCEES practice exam. Definitely not a bad thing though. It's gotten me looking at and brushing up on some areas of the MERM which the NCEES exam didn't.

 

[sambisu]

I'm hoping Slay the PE has licensing permissions for problems lifted from other texts...

View attachment 10904View attachment 10903

 

[Slay the P.E.]

I'm hoping Slay the PE has licensing permissions for problems lifted from other texts...

Sam,

You will find that maybe 10 or 12 of our test's problems are based on problems from Incropera for Heat Transfer, Cengel/Boles for Thermo, and Munson/Young/Okiishi for Fluids. Most have been changed more than this one you have pointed out, but you will indeed recognize the "core" of those problems.  The rest of our exam problems are originally ours.  

Our practice exam provides value even if you still have all those texts because the problems were carefully selected as being on topics relevant to the exam, helping you avoid working problems from them that would not benefit you. So our intention with those few problems was to present a carefully curated selection. If you don't have those texts, then the value from our exam is even greater since going and getting those texts would cost far more and you wouldn't have the benefit of knowing which problems to focus on.

 

[mckenz007]

Just completed a mock trial of this test, though I broke it up to 4/hrs over two days. 46/80.... nowhere near where I want to be < 3 weeks out, but at least I’ve identified that I really struggle with all the power plant type questions. I have no memory of these types of problems back in school and certainly has nothing to do with my job now, but hopefully I still have time to figure them out between now and 4/13...

 

[Suhaib Ahmed]

Just completed a mock trial of this test, though I broke it up to 4/hrs over two days. 46/80.... nowhere near where I want to be < 3 weeks out, but at least I’ve identified that I really struggle with all the power plant type questions. I have no memory of these types of problems back in school and certainly has nothing to do with my job now, but hopefully I still have time to figure them out between now and 4/13...

Going through the Practice Exam right now and this is definitely harder and more detailed than the NCEES practice exam. Studying the material Slay the PE practice exam has is definitely beneficial but hoping the difficultly isn't similar to the actual exam! NCEES is a bit simpler so hoping it is more like that. 

 

[sambisu]

I felt like the first half of the Slay the PE exam beat me up a lot more than the second half. I felt much better after getting through the whole thing than I did about 1/4 of the way through. But I definitely found some weak areas I need to work on. Particularly compressible fluid dynamics and nozzle flow problems. 

 

[mckenz007]

Now that I’ve actually had a chance to review some the solutions, I can see that many of the questions are actually quite simple if you can wade through all the superfluous information and focus on just what they are looking for. Everytime I saw a giant steam plant diagram my brain freaked out, but they really aren’t that bad if you break it down... I’m looking forward at doing a second run of this test under that mindset...

Ohh compressible flow - I’m just reallllly hoping any of those questions will match the level of difficulty of the Ncees practice test

 

[Slay the P.E.]

...if you can wade through all the superfluous information and focus on just what they are looking for. Everytime I saw a giant steam plant diagram my brain freaked out, but they really aren’t that bad if you break it down... 

This is very much by design. You will see a few problems with a lot of unnecessary information to distract you and freak you out.  We wanted this to happen to you now and not for the first time during the actual test )