SEI Exam Strategy

[hansel]

Can those who passed advise on what problem solving strategy worked best for them? For example, did you work the questions in the sequence they were given or did you identify the easy, the medium easy and the difficults and worked them from easy to difficult?

 

[WoodSlinger]

Can those who passed advise on what problem solving strategy worked best for them? For example, did you work the questions in the sequence they were given or did you identify the easy, the medium easy and the difficults and worked them from easy to difficult?

I took the exam twice. The first time, I skipped over the "difficult" questions and came back to them at the end of each session. This didn't work well for me. I was tired and beat up, and then I tried to answer all of the questions that were more of a struggle for me all at the same time. Not a good idea in my mind. The second time I just did them in order, and the result was much better. Doing them in order allows you to spread the misery of the more difficult questions out, and having the easier ones mixed in gives your brain a bit of a break.

 

[Casey]

I generally go in sequence and only skip the questions I know will take me more time than normal to answer or the ones that I am absolutely clueless on and know I will be digging through my references to find the answer..

 

[wilheldp_PE]

I worked straight through the exam, marking the ones that I wanted to revisit with an asterisk in the corner of the page. I put an answer on the scantron sheet whether or not I felt confident of the answer. I think this is key because it is a common nightmare of test takers to forget to fill in a bubble, then realize that all of your answers are one bubble off (and not have time to correct the mistake).

 

[hansel]

Thanks to all of you.

 

[dastuff]

I would start each one then if i saw it going a little long would leave it and come back. That way i got it working in the back-ground.. And at some point during the test i would usually have an ah-ha moment and jump back and finish it up.. Except when it was referring to anything out of the AASHTO whereupon i just cried a single tear and whatever letter it landed closest to was what i was going to choose.

My brain sort of works like when you ctrl-alt-delete in windows and see all those processes running but have no idea what they do... Yah, those processes usually solve problems that i don't want to think about