How I passed CA PE Surveying Exam WITHOUT a Calculator!

[Antigravitation]

I can't help but sharing with you my horrible yet interesting experience in my Surveying Exam in April 2016.

It was my first try of the CA PE exams and I took it seriously. 3 months of hard study, bought tons of testing materials, traveled 6000 miles from Europe and squeezed 3 exams in a row in my 3 holidays. Simply could not afford any failure!

Finally came the test day, it was a nice morning and I arrived the test center very early. Everything looked alright and I started my surveying test confidently. Not until the second question which contains angle calculation that I realized myself made an extremely horrible mistake: I left my CALCULATOR in the car!

Immediately I was deeply shocked and just couldn't believe it was happening. There was no way I could make up under that circumstance, I couldn't walk out of the room except for restroom, and there was a camera watching me every second. No time to waste, I just had to carry on with my brain and bare hands. Heart racing and sweating, I felt so sorry that all my hard work suddenly became useless, I failed my parents, my girlfriend and all the colleagues that supported me. I even started to think about my next attempt in October. Thousands of thoughts overwhelmed me, yet I could not stop my pencil.

I did all the +-*/^ as fast as I could without decimal precision, and even some sqrt,sin,cos with reasonable estimation. Lots of trigonometric calculations(with xx0xx'xx"angles), complicated traverse and curve questions or for those with options all very close to each other, I just had to give up. Eventually I completely guessed 12 out of 55, very roughly estimated 10/55, and for the rest 33 I just did half estimation half calculation only once for each. 4 sheets of scratch paper was just not enough for the hand calc load! Real torment and nightmare!


Thank God and such a MIRACLE and big relief when I learned just two days ago that I passed all 3 exams! I can finally bear recalling that experience. Although they may set the bar lower this time, or I just used up all my luck, that's something can keep me high for long time.

My afterthoughts about that:
- I had hardly any surveying experience, therefore the only thing I did was understanding books and practicing problems. Trying to understand theories from books(I used Mansour's and Cuomo's books) is the key to every question. There're lots of conceptual questions in the exam and make sure you can solve most of them.

- Then, just practice more and more. It really helped that I practiced over 500 surveying questions. Maybe that's more than I needed but it sharpened my mind and understand the questions very quickly. After loads of practice, you'll find the test is just old questions with new numbers.

- Finally, summarize and categorize the critical questions and try to understand the theories again. If you find it really difficult, just try to memorize the solution approach of those questions.

I think those are the non-lucky part that saved my life, and all the crazy hand calcs didn't fail me! This PE has very high value!

 

[Okiryu]

Congratulations!! And thanks for sharing your experience with us. Positives things like you experimented makes days start thinking positively as well!!

 

[KootK]

Wow! That's an impressive display of tenacity. I put all of my eggs in the "calculator programs" basket when I wrote the exam. If I had to do without, I probably just would have opted for a nap.

I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.

 

[ashtree]

Antigravitation

Your 3 points at the end are very important and had you not had the high level of understanding, the practice and the ability to categorize you would have been done for without a calculator.
You have learned a valuable lesson that is so often lost by many in the industry. Whilst all the automated programs, and gadgets are great and make life easier and more interesting they should never replace a high level of understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of the work that is to be done.
Unfortunately many in the industry are only as good as the software they use.


Regards
Ashtree
"Any water can be made potable if you filter it through enough money"

 

[chicopee]

Would you mind telling us your CA PE number?

 

[Antigravitation]

Hi Guys, thank you! I celebrated really hard last weekend!
I actually didn't expect the good news, and it was indeed an extreme lesson to show how valuable and important the understanding of theories is to solving problems.
When I told my supervisor about the story, he replied that 'that's what you should do, PE exam doesn't need a calculator...'(joking a little bit).
Chicopee, I haven't been issued a PE number yet, just got the notification that I achieved all licensure requirements.
Cheers!

 

[gbam]

Nice!

 

[RocketRed]

That's awesome. Way to persevere.

I always give a piece of advice to people taking the exam: "Figure out the units and the order of magnitude for the answer before you do anything else". Sometimes the right circle to fill in will jump out before you have to do any real calculations, giving more time for more difficult questions.

 

[EdStainless]

AG, you learned a good real world lesson, there is time to panic later, solve the problem now.

AntiGrav and RR, you two have hit on a sore point with me, engineers that can't estimate.
The ability to get into the 'ball park' and to identify a clearly wrong answer are both keys to being a better than average engineer.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

 

[MacGruber22]

Congrats!

"It is imperative Cunth doesn't get his hands on those codes."