SE Exam Approach 1

[Br_Engr]

Good afternoon -

I have a question about the upcoming SE exam.

For those who have taken it, did you go through and answer all of the steel questions, and then go back and answer concrete, then timber, etc. or did you just answer the problems in order?

I see advantages and efficiencies by completing them in "groups" (less shuffling of ref material, mindset, etc.) but I wanted to hear from some folks who have taken it.

Thoughts on this approach?

Thank you.

 

[r13]

Answer the questions by certainties and level of difficulties, so it won't interrupt your flow of thoughts. The uncertainty and difficulty tend to slow down your effort, and ends up in too many easy questions been left unanswered and affecting the score.

 

[StructEngBrah]

I agree with r13.

My approach was I went through the multiple choice questions at the start of the exam and labeled each question 1,2, or 3. Ones were for easy questions that I knew how to do right away. Twos were more difficult, but I think I could figure them out in a reasonable amount of time. Threes were for questions that I had no idea how to do them when I first read the question. I went through and did all of the 1s, then I did all of the 2s, and then I did all of the 3s. By the time you get to the number 3s, you are all warmed up and your nerves have calmed down.

You have to be pretty quick on the multiple choice, getting stuck on a difficult question at the start of the exam is a great way to tank you score.

Shifting material is kind of a pain, but, they give you enough room during the exam you can just stack all of your resources on the table and grab the ones that are applicable for that question.

 

[Lomarandil]

My approach was close to StructBrah's advice, but don't bother labeling the 1s, just do them.

I did find it useful to do my 2s (50-60% of the total) mostly by topic.
----
just call me Lo.

 

[STrctPono]

I took the exam less than 4 years ago. My approach was to answer all of the bridge problems (AASHTO) first, then ASCE, then ACI, then AISC, then NDS. I left all the masonry and cold formed steel problems for last as those were my most unfamiliar.

It's all about memorizing where in the code book the specific section the problem pertains to is. In my opinion, for the average difficulty problem you have no more than 2 minutes to find the specific code reference in the chapter otherwise you're going to lose time on that problem.

 

[WARose]

When I took it (in the old SE I&II days).....for the multiple choice questions, I went through in passes. The first pass I made was the stuff that could be answered real quickly, then the next pass was for stuff a little longer, and so on.

Since all the questions are weighed equally.....it doesn't make any sense to run out of time to answer 1 question and lose 3 easy ones.

 

[MR_E30]

I took the exam last October and I went with the seemingly more popular approach of answering questions based on immediately perceived difficulty. I did not have to label my questions, as they naturally fell into two groups for me: Those I knew what to do immediately or exactly where to go in the SERM or code, and all others.

I did work my second, harder, group of questions by material to avoid shuffling books everywhere.

After knocking out the 'easier' questions (none were truly easy, except one or two) I recalculated my time per question to stay on track better.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

I took it way back in 2003. When California was transitioning from a CA specific exam to the current format. Even so, I have some basic thoughts / strategies that I thought worked well:

1) This is a speed exam first and foremost. You have to work quickly. I worked continuously for 4 hours and my hand was sore and cramped by the time the exam was over or we got a break.

2) I brought ear plugs, which ended up being important. Apparently a guy (or gal?) right behind me got kicked out of the exam for some reason and started a ruckus. I was in the zone enough (with the help of the ear plugs) that I didn't even notice. But, it would have been seriously distracting had I noticed it.

3) Know your references really well. If you need a reference some something don't know where to look within that reference and cannot find it quickly, you might as well skip that problem because you just don't have time to flip through your references very much.

4) For the most part, I tried to work straight through. The only exception is that I would skip a hard problem that I didn't know how to do and come back to it later. If I knew basically how to do the problem, but realized that I'd have to look through a reference (or I knew it was going to really slow me down) then sometimes I'd do it and sometimes I'd skip it.

5) Be prepared. I brought an extra calculator, a bunch of erasers and pencils and such. The last think I wanted was to flub a problem because the battery on my calculator died or something very preventable like that.

 

[WARose]

2) I brought ear plugs, which ended up being important. Apparently a guy (or gal?) right behind me got kicked out of the exam for some reason and started a ruckus. I was in the zone enough (with the help of the ear plugs) that I didn't even notice. But, it would have been seriously distracting had I noticed it.

I remember one of the times I took the SE I (it took a few shots with that one), we got about an hour into it and somebody near me had their cell phone go off.

This is after being told about 100 times before you even get there and just prior to the exam starting not to have those things on you.

Some people don't listen (or he just forgot about it).

 

[Br_Engr]

Thank you all for your input!

Some great advice here.

 

[Celt83]

when I was studying I did the practice exam a couple different ways, but ultimately landed on just working thru the problems in the order they are given with the mind set of if after reading the problem statement I don't immediately know how to begin or what reference to look in skip the problem and come back to it. I'd also make note of of the question I skipped but quickly keeping a running list of the problem number in the upper left of my working sheet.

I'm not a morning person and also not a bridge person my day one gravity morning session started out with a raw analysis problem that demanded more mental power than I could muster that early and then 4 bridge problems so I was 5 questions in before I did anything. I found though that I made the decision within a second or two as to whether I could tackle the problem in 5 minutes and ultimately was able to return and complete the ones I skipped before time ran out.

That's a long way of saying decide which way you want to approach it then using the practice exams use that routine so you get used to how your going to keep track of what you skipped, shuffling references, early recognition of a problem that will demand more time, etc.

My Personal Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

Open Source Structural GitHub Group:

https://github.com/open-struct-engineer

 

[dauwerda]

The recommendations given by AEI (formerly part of EET) are in line with StructEngBrah (this is also how I approached it). The one thing they stressed is to fully read each problem before ranking it (1, 2, or 3) and moving on to the next one. The reason for this is that your brain will subconsciously be working on them while you are working on other problems, so when you go back to do it chances are you will have a better understanding than you do on your first read.

As others have noted, don't get stuck working on one problem that you "know how to do" if it takes 20 minutes - come back to that one after you know you have answered all the quick ones.

 

[azcats]

Apparently a guy (or gal?) right behind me got kicked out of the exam for some reason and started a ruckus.

Dude next to me got booted from the CA Civil PE exam for an 'illegal' calculator in Pomona in about 2006. We were a couple hours in.