Why Six Minutes per Question is a Sham

[gpoli111]

I personally feel like scanning through the questions is a waste of precious time. I prefer to try all of the questions skipping only those I know will be a real struggle or guess, that'd be about 5 per session. If it's an easy question you can answer it whether it's question 40 and you went in order or as if you thumbed through all of them first. Why read the questions and put thought into the difficulty when you may 1/3 and have to come back later and start all over again? I had over an hour/45 min. morning/afternoon respectively to go back to those 5 or so hard questions/guesses. 

 

[ptatohed]

I personally feel like scanning through the questions is a waste of precious time. I prefer to try all of the questions skipping only those I know will be a real struggle or guess, that'd be about 5 per session. If it's an easy question you can answer it whether it's question 40 and you went in order or as if you thumbed through all of them first. Why read the questions and put thought into the difficulty when you may 1/3 and have to come back later and start all over again? I had over an hour/45 min. morning/afternoon respectively to go back to those 5 or so hard questions/guesses. 

First scanning questions, ranking them by order of difficulty, and then working them in that order of difficulty is a must if you are like me and you aren't going to get to all 40 in 4 hours.  So, yeah, someone like you who knows for certain they will be able to attempt all 40 well within the 4 hour limit, has no reason to rank.  But in every single exam I took (FE, 8hr, CA Survey, CA Seismic), I never completed all questions and had to guess near the end.  So, scanning and ranking was a must for me.  It was the difference between getting to, say, 36 problems instead of, say, 30 problems.      

 

[BigWheel]

I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well. 

Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:

First Pass: low-hanging fruit - requires little to no time/effort to answer. Generally less than 30 seconds invested.

Second Pass: all code-related questions. I thought this was especially helpful, as it is a very efficient use of references and time. For me, because I'm pretty familiar with my codes, generally a minute or two invested.

Third Pass: if calculation required, problems I knew I could set up, process, and solve with just a minute's worth of reference material "look-up" effort involved; 3-4 minutes invested. If conceptual, problems I knew I could locate related information across multiple references and make an informed choice; limited myself to the 6 minute average.

Fourth Pass: entirely calculation-based problems I identified as my weak subject(s), which would require a substantial amount of research and reference to at least attempt to solve, but may wind up having to guess if I run out of time. When I got here, I figured up the number of minutes I had left and divided them by the number of questions I marked with a "4" and that was my budget. Morning session left me with 5 questions in this category with about an hour left. My afternoon session left me with 8 questions and about 30 minutes left.

i wound up with one question out of the 80 (the last one I answered) that was a WAG and two others that I SWAGed.

 

[ptatohed]

I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well. 

Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:

First Pass: low-hanging fruit - requires little to no time/effort to answer. Generally less than 30 seconds invested.

Second Pass: all code-related questions. I thought this was especially helpful, as it is a very efficient use of references and time. For me, because I'm pretty familiar with my codes, generally a minute or two invested.

Third Pass: if calculation required, problems I knew I could set up, process, and solve with just a minute's worth of reference material "look-up" effort involved; 3-4 minutes invested. If conceptual, problems I knew I could locate related information across multiple references and make an informed choice; limited myself to the 6 minute average.

Fourth Pass: entirely calculation-based problems I identified as my weak subject(s), which would require a substantial amount of research and reference to at least attempt to solve, but may wind up having to guess if I run out of time. When I got here, I figured up the number of minutes I had left and divided them by the number of questions I marked with a "4" and that was my budget. Morning session left me with 5 questions in this category with about an hour left. My afternoon session left me with 8 questions and about 30 minutes left.

i wound up with one question out of the 80 (the last one I answered) that was a WAG and two others that I SWAGed.

I guess that would work but it seems a tad too complicated to me.  I simply did a first pass where I did three things:  One, like you said, work the low hanging fruit; two, go ahead and guess now on the ones you think are probably 'impossible' for you (for me, this was any environmental question!  Even some structural questions.); and three, rank on your scantron the difficulty of the remaining "middle" questions (use 1, 2, 3 or symbols to identify as easy (least time required), medium, hard (most time required).  Don't use A, B, C as it may mess you up with your answers).  2nd pass work the 1s, 3rd pass work the 2s, 4th pass worth the 3s.  If you have leftover time, go back and look at the 'impossible' ones you previously guessed on (I never had time to do that though).  

 

[BigWheel]

I guess that would work but it seems a tad too complicated to me.  I simply did a first pass where I did three things:  One, like you said, work the low hanging fruit; two, go ahead and guess now on the ones you think are probably 'impossible' for you (for me, this was any environmental question!  Even some structural questions.); and three, rank on your scantron the difficulty of the remaining "middle" questions (use 1, 2, 3 or symbols to identify as easy (least time required), medium, hard (most time required).  Don't use A, B, C as it may mess you up with your answers).  2nd pass work the 1s, 3rd pass work the 2s, 4th pass worth the 3s.  If you have leftover time, go back and look at the 'impossible' ones you previously guessed on (I never had time to do that though).  

Sounds like we did the same thing, but worded it differently.

 

[BigWheel]

The other benefit of ranking (for me, anyway) was I didn't work problems sequentially. I skipped around, so having problems ranked on the scantron allowed me to quickly identify what the "next" problem is.

 

[KatyLied P.E.]

I used Spin-Up's approach and it served me well. 

Summary for those unfamiliar with Spin-Up:

First Pass: low-hanging fruit - requires little to no time/effort to answer. Generally less than 30 seconds invested.

Second Pass: all code-related questions. I thought this was especially helpful, as it is a very efficient use of references and time. For me, because I'm pretty familiar with my codes, generally a minute or two invested.

Third Pass: if calculation required, problems I knew I could set up, process, and solve with just a minute's worth of reference material "look-up" effort involved; 3-4 minutes invested. If conceptual, problems I knew I could locate related information across multiple references and make an informed choice; limited myself to the 6 minute average.

Fourth Pass: entirely calculation-based problems I identified as my weak subject(s), which would require a substantial amount of research and reference to at least attempt to solve, but may wind up having to guess if I run out of time. When I got here, I figured up the number of minutes I had left and divided them by the number of questions I marked with a "4" and that was my budget. Morning session left me with 5 questions in this category with about an hour left. My afternoon session left me with 8 questions and about 30 minutes left.

i wound up with one question out of the 80 (the last one I answered) that was a WAG and two others that I SWAGed.

lusone:   Amen brother!  I used that strategy and recommend it to anyone who asks.

 

[ptatohed]

The other benefit of ranking (for me, anyway) was I didn't work problems sequentially. I skipped around, so having problems ranked on the scantron allowed me to quickly identify what the "next" problem is.

But, to play Devil's Advocate, if you worked them sequentially, you'd also know what the next problem is.  "n+1".   

 

[BigWheel]

But, to play Devil's Advocate, if you worked them sequentially, you'd also know what the next problem is.  "n+1".   

Ha! I suppose you're right.

I had this one problem that I could not figure out how to set up to save my life. It seemed like I had everything I needed to get to work, except I was missing a key variable. No matter how many different approaches I tried, I would be missing yet another key variable. Frustrated, I skipped it and worked a couple of other problems.

When I finished one particular problem, it occurred to me that I could solve that frustrating one using the same approach I just used...all I needed to do was adjust the approach just slightly to make it work with my given parameters. When I got to the end, I couldn't believe that I didn't see it sooner. It was so obvious once I saw it. It really was a very clever problem.

Anyhow - I'm not sure if I would have ever seen the solution without having skipped it for a minute and work some different problems to get out of the rut.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

On my exam there were questions that were you either know this or you don't. References wouldn't help much. Then there were questions that required me to solve a problem. I divided questions up in four categories, based on the amount of time to solve. In the morning, I had so many questions in Groups 1 & 2, that I had basically as much time as I could use on the rest. In the afternoon, I had only <5 problems that fell into categories 1-2, a bunch in 3, and many in 4.

1. Questions I could answer on the spot without any calculation/references - Very low hanging fruit, these questions were basically free points.

2. Questions that I knew I could answer with some calculation or I needed to look up info (i.e. code references/tables)

3. Calculations that I knew I could do, but would take some time

4. Things that needed to be looked up and would take more time, and I may or may not be able to find in references. 

My approach was very similar to this, but was slightly modified.

I started every question, in order. If it fell in any of the first 3 categories, I did it on the spot. I could look it up quickly, my mind was already on it, so why not finish it. 

If I started working on it and I discovered it was more of a category 4 (taking too long to solve), I would write down my thought process and proceed to the next question.  I even had a couple Category 5's in the afternoon: "WTF is this?"  Read the question, had no idea what they were asking and/or how to solve it, skipped it and moved on. If you do this, be sure to skip the answer line accordingly. I had to erase and re-fill a few questions because I didn't skip that problem on the answer sheet.

By skipping the Cat 5's, I often found that solving the other "low hanging fruit" provided insight to the ones I didn't know. I would then return to those skipped problems and try to apply my new concept. One of them I was able to "reverse engineer" from the given answers.

Doing it this way, I had about an hour to spare in both AM and PM sessions to go back and tackle the 2-3 impossible questions. If I didn't have a clue after 15 additional minutes, I filled in a random letter and moved on.

 

[BigWheel]

 ...I even had a couple Category 5's in the afternoon: "WTF is this?"...

(truncated)

Ha! Just a couple?! It felt like half of my afternoon session questions fell in the "WTF" category, which was not a Spin-Up category, but nicely summarizes my feelings about them. My last problem was definitely a WTF question.

When the proctor announced, "Five minutes left," I took the last 4 minutes to thumb through ALL of my references to find the answer. When I didn't find it, I made a WAG at one-minute left and lived with it...I literally killed the first bubble I looked at on the scantron...