SOPE for PE Exam 2

[DirtSmuggler]

I have SOPE (School of PE) study material pdfs. It's supposedly catered towards CBT exam. The CBT exam has a reference manual that we can use for the exam. The SOPE material is suppose to reference equations to that manual.

What I found is the Eqn number they reference do not match up with the NCEES PE references manual. Those same equations are sometimes buried in that manual but not always. Why do the Eqn number not match? I asked the person I got the PDF from and they have no clue.

For example they call for Eqn 5-20. That doesn't exist in the reference manual. However in section 6.2.7.1 you will find that equation. It doesn't always work like that, sometimes you can't find the same equations in the manual at all.

That manual is all you have when you take the CBT, so it would be nice to know where exactly to find these equations easily instead of wasting time skimming through and finding it.

Anyone got any idea why? Thanks.

 

[phamENG]

Check dates. Things change. No idea how the CBT is working, but since it's relatively new I wouldn't be surprised if they have been doing a decent amount of updating/editing of everything each exam cycle as they get more and more feedback. So if you have study material from 2 cycles ago, it may not match the current one. (This is a WAG...I really have no idea.)

"the person I got the PDF from" - I take this to mean you did not procure these study materials from School of PE?

If not, you could contact them and frame it like this: "I was taking a look at a friend's School of PE study material to see if I thought it would be a worthwhile investment for me, and I noticed <insert problem>. Can you explain why this is? Do your current materials fix this?" Something like that.

 

[le99]

If indeed "The SOPE material" is a reference of the NCEES PE references manual, the reference number of items should match, otherwise, one of them is outdated. In general, the SOPE material shall list its date of publishing and the edition/version of the NCEES PE reference manual it refers to.

 

[dhengr]

DirtSmuggler:
They are ever so subtly training you for the real world of engineering, where the bldg. code editions, standards editions, std. product info. catalogs , and the like, never match up. You need to own or have access to every code and std. in the universe, so you can go fishing in them all to finally make the match-up. Then, don’t bother to ask why the change from one edition to the next, because ever the people on that stds. writing committee can’t give you a straight answer, and you will get two different, not so straight, answers from two different people on that same committee. They aren’t really trying to help the engineer or standardize things any longer, they are much more worried about their own little testing, report writing/selling, and code/std. publishing empires. Having a newer, more complex, less comprehensible code to sell you every couple years is their primary goal, not making the engineering process any easier.

 

[Ron]

Well said, dhengr!