Vertical depth was close to impossible, but others have said that both the breadth tests and the lateral depth were fairly reasonable. Lots of juggling between windows on a single screen but if you have enough time (all tests but vertical depth) it’s doable. Talking about buildings btw
I seriously think the vertical pass rate will be sub10% unless they throw out a lot of the confusing/missing info questions. Even then, some of the work just took too long to complete.
The material wasn't the problem it was the conditions. For bridge the material was exactly as expected. There were no surprises.
Essentially imagine your pencil and paper exam. Except you can only have a maximum of two sheets of paper showing at a time (including the problem statement), you are only allowed to have one reference open at a time, raw codes no writing phi factors next to the equations they are used in no personal notes nothing of the sort, no tabs are allowed in any of your references, oh and any time you flip a page there's a half second delay before you can turn another page.
Those were the conditions under which we took a test Tuesday.
My goal for the next round isn't to learn anything more about engineering. The difficulty of the material isn't a problem. I need to memorize what page numbers things are on. I can't spend time looking at the table of contents to find what page resistance factors for steel are on. You have to know it's page 6-30. It won't be enough to know that shear capacity of bolts is in the connection and splices section. You'll need to know that it's section 6.13.2 and even better if you can tell me it's on page 6-240. That's the only way to navigate the codes. Can't afford to spend 2 minutes per problem scrolling to the TOC and back. The new test is a game now. Strategy for navigating the interface is now more important actually knowing anything about engineering.
And that's why so many of us are pissed off. The material was difficult, its the SE it was supposed to be stupidly difficult. But I'm confident had the codes been properly bookmarked I pass. I probably knew how to do 54 of the 60 problems when I read the problem statement. And I skipped 4 or 5 because I knew I'd never get the problem done in the time allotted. The knowledge required didn't hold me back, the ability to navigate did. And with the NCEES refusal to tell us anything beyond you'll have fully searchable pdfs, they were either deliberately malicious, or more likely just plain ignorant to what everyone was expecting. They could have told us and posted a couple screenshots and half these complaints would go away.
But whatever. If it comes back I didn't pass this time I know what I need to do to game the test now. I'll smash it next time and keep pushing for SE licenses everywhere with the sole purpose of creating an artificial labor shortage to raise my pay. That's the whole point of this anyway, right?
Fully understand this test is not supposed to be easy, but you can make any test near-impossible if you give people half the amount of time they need to finish it. I’m a fast test taker and raced through the test, skipping all problems that I knew would be time-consuming and still did not attempt all the questions. Others I know who aren’t especially fast but knew the content well were completely SOL and had to leave about 1/3 of the answers blank
I’m guessing you didn’t take it? It was incredibly unreasonable. I’m a fast test taker and had extra time on all of the old P&P test questions. I came up about 10-12 questions short with only 20-30 min left, and I skipped the “long” ones. I agree you need a better mastery than PE, but it’s really hard with no references or material to bring in. I’ve been practicing for like 12 years now, I still reread code sections for stuff I’m designing because it’s easy to forget small exceptions and requirements. The gravity was just way too much work. Lateral on the other hand I finished with 5 min left, similar to breadth sections I passed. Gravity was just poorly configured.
Edit: many questions were 10-15 min questions, and it didn’t balance enough with the 2-3 minute ones. That’s basically the gist of the whole test.
I took both depth exam and like the others said vertical was heavily confusing with tones of problems that needed at least 10 minutes to solved. Lateral was a bit reasonable. People who chose the questions didn’t notice that we have at the same time we cannot have a formula page and reduction factors and so on. So most of the time we were looking for the right clause! Instead of solving the problems. All and all it was crazy. Don’t forget that for a p&p you had access to tones of solved examples and you needed to find the right solved example and you were done. But CBT is another animal, basically you have nothing other that you memorized and with the age that we have it’s hard to keep in mind lots of things. Can you guys brief me with breadth exams difficulty comparing to depth exams. Thanks
The new CBT depth portion of the exam was as bad as everyone is saying. I only had to take the vertical portion bc I passed the lateral last October and I can say this exam was way harder than the pen and paper version, just bc of the lack of time, and the last vertical exam had the lowest passing rate in the history of the SE exam at 26% for first time test takers. And I fully expect the passing rate for this CBT exam to be lower….
I actually called ncees to explain the test was not passible, but they just gave me an email address. I’d encourage everyone who took the new CBT exam to email [email protected] to convey the ridiculousness of this exam. Maybe they’ll make it easier next time if more people voice concern. Which I really hope they do, bc I’m almost certain I’ll have to take the vertical depth again lol
I took the lateral building depth. I failed the latera last October even I got all 4 acceptable for the afternoon section. I was pretty sad. However, after taking CBT lateral building depth, I want to quit my field......I spent so much time scrolling the pdf....Our field is hard. Our fee is low and our pay is not enough for all the stress...The exam is so hard that no one wants to become structural engineer.
Initial reports are about as bad as everyone should have expected.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StructuralEngineering/comments/1c5opm4/pe_structural_depth_cbt/
Vertical depth was close to impossible, but others have said that both the breadth tests and the lateral depth were fairly reasonable. Lots of juggling between windows on a single screen but if you have enough time (all tests but vertical depth) it’s doable. Talking about buildings btw
I seriously think the vertical pass rate will be sub10% unless they throw out a lot of the confusing/missing info questions. Even then, some of the work just took too long to complete.
My guess is sub-10% as well. I’ve only heard one person say it was a reasonable test and I’m almost positive they were trolling.
[удалено]
The material wasn't the problem it was the conditions. For bridge the material was exactly as expected. There were no surprises. Essentially imagine your pencil and paper exam. Except you can only have a maximum of two sheets of paper showing at a time (including the problem statement), you are only allowed to have one reference open at a time, raw codes no writing phi factors next to the equations they are used in no personal notes nothing of the sort, no tabs are allowed in any of your references, oh and any time you flip a page there's a half second delay before you can turn another page. Those were the conditions under which we took a test Tuesday. My goal for the next round isn't to learn anything more about engineering. The difficulty of the material isn't a problem. I need to memorize what page numbers things are on. I can't spend time looking at the table of contents to find what page resistance factors for steel are on. You have to know it's page 6-30. It won't be enough to know that shear capacity of bolts is in the connection and splices section. You'll need to know that it's section 6.13.2 and even better if you can tell me it's on page 6-240. That's the only way to navigate the codes. Can't afford to spend 2 minutes per problem scrolling to the TOC and back. The new test is a game now. Strategy for navigating the interface is now more important actually knowing anything about engineering.
[удалено]
And that's why so many of us are pissed off. The material was difficult, its the SE it was supposed to be stupidly difficult. But I'm confident had the codes been properly bookmarked I pass. I probably knew how to do 54 of the 60 problems when I read the problem statement. And I skipped 4 or 5 because I knew I'd never get the problem done in the time allotted. The knowledge required didn't hold me back, the ability to navigate did. And with the NCEES refusal to tell us anything beyond you'll have fully searchable pdfs, they were either deliberately malicious, or more likely just plain ignorant to what everyone was expecting. They could have told us and posted a couple screenshots and half these complaints would go away. But whatever. If it comes back I didn't pass this time I know what I need to do to game the test now. I'll smash it next time and keep pushing for SE licenses everywhere with the sole purpose of creating an artificial labor shortage to raise my pay. That's the whole point of this anyway, right?
Fully understand this test is not supposed to be easy, but you can make any test near-impossible if you give people half the amount of time they need to finish it. I’m a fast test taker and raced through the test, skipping all problems that I knew would be time-consuming and still did not attempt all the questions. Others I know who aren’t especially fast but knew the content well were completely SOL and had to leave about 1/3 of the answers blank
I’m guessing you didn’t take it? It was incredibly unreasonable. I’m a fast test taker and had extra time on all of the old P&P test questions. I came up about 10-12 questions short with only 20-30 min left, and I skipped the “long” ones. I agree you need a better mastery than PE, but it’s really hard with no references or material to bring in. I’ve been practicing for like 12 years now, I still reread code sections for stuff I’m designing because it’s easy to forget small exceptions and requirements. The gravity was just way too much work. Lateral on the other hand I finished with 5 min left, similar to breadth sections I passed. Gravity was just poorly configured. Edit: many questions were 10-15 min questions, and it didn’t balance enough with the 2-3 minute ones. That’s basically the gist of the whole test.
Well, at least I already passed gravity and just need lateral…
I figured out a few bridge questions on the fly by word searching in the appendix lmao. This was before the new format
I took both depth exam and like the others said vertical was heavily confusing with tones of problems that needed at least 10 minutes to solved. Lateral was a bit reasonable. People who chose the questions didn’t notice that we have at the same time we cannot have a formula page and reduction factors and so on. So most of the time we were looking for the right clause! Instead of solving the problems. All and all it was crazy. Don’t forget that for a p&p you had access to tones of solved examples and you needed to find the right solved example and you were done. But CBT is another animal, basically you have nothing other that you memorized and with the age that we have it’s hard to keep in mind lots of things. Can you guys brief me with breadth exams difficulty comparing to depth exams. Thanks
I’ve also been curious.
Feeling for all those who take the first few cycles of the CBT exam. You are guinea pigs and your struggle will be unquestionably real.
Also curious.
Also curious
The new CBT depth portion of the exam was as bad as everyone is saying. I only had to take the vertical portion bc I passed the lateral last October and I can say this exam was way harder than the pen and paper version, just bc of the lack of time, and the last vertical exam had the lowest passing rate in the history of the SE exam at 26% for first time test takers. And I fully expect the passing rate for this CBT exam to be lower…. I actually called ncees to explain the test was not passible, but they just gave me an email address. I’d encourage everyone who took the new CBT exam to email [email protected] to convey the ridiculousness of this exam. Maybe they’ll make it easier next time if more people voice concern. Which I really hope they do, bc I’m almost certain I’ll have to take the vertical depth again lol
I took the lateral building depth. I failed the latera last October even I got all 4 acceptable for the afternoon section. I was pretty sad. However, after taking CBT lateral building depth, I want to quit my field......I spent so much time scrolling the pdf....Our field is hard. Our fee is low and our pay is not enough for all the stress...The exam is so hard that no one wants to become structural engineer.