for me personally it is a matter environmental topics. I work for an engineering firm where our primary design work has to do with stormwater management, some water distribution and sanitary sewer designs. So I got the first half that is WR. Its the BODs, and water chemistry and those type of topics that I just don't handle well. This better explains why I think I scored around 50% in the Pm, and have historically over the previous two exams.
I wish I had my results and knew if I passed before I comment...but, shoot, I'll throw in my two cents anyway on the off chance that anybody's about to start their review and is worried about it. The problem with the environmental problems is that they cover a huge subject area, and are often written specifically to overwhelm the user with information. I feel like to the average test taker, when encountered with an environmental problem, your first instinct is "Wow- I have no clue where to start" and you start flipping through the CERM hoping there's a formula that has most of the information.
But the thing is...for most of these problems, you don't even need the CERM. With perhaps a couple exceptions, the environmental problems are all mass balance/unit conversion questions. You can get misled into thinking it's more complicated when you see chemical equations, pH levels and big words like "Mixed Liquor Volatile Suspended Solids," but if you changed those same words to "apples and oranges" and were asked to find the proportion of apples to oranges after mixing them together, suddenly it's a much easier problem. I think that's the tradeoff the exam writers made. They know that nobody can become a wastewater expert in two months, so they just make them challenging math problems with wastewater vernacular.
The CERM provides a LOT of equations, which I think is in some ways a bad thing, because it makes you depend on them if you're not familiar...but (again with a couple exceptions), many of these formulas are very easily derived, and if you just followed the unit conversion through your problem, you'd arrive at the same result. Even the magic "8.35" mg/L->lb/MG conversion is unnecessary, it's possible to just convert units on the fly.
When working the NCEES practice problems, I found that a couple of the solutions were really badly written for me to understand because they took shortcuts. Instead, I had to solve them with my own method (following logical unit conversions/mass balance) and I was much more comfortable with the result. So, the best strategy is not to review environmental textbooks or read the CERM section over and over. Rather it's to work problems over and over, and instead of trying to mimic the given solution which usually uses a shortcut formula, try to find the solution logically by balancing mass and converting units.
Anyway, hopefully I passed...but even if I didn't, I don't think my strategy for enviro will change the next time around.
