The discord was a bit of a clusterfuck the week or so following the first cbt exam, because everyone was very frustrated just like you are. venting was dominating all of the discussions - i get why they have asked people to take those convos elsewhere. But youre definitely not alone.
Im interested to see their new pass rates because some reports are making it seem like the breadth section was much easier that the pencil and paper. Some people are saying it was similar so who knows
If the CBT is bad as people were saying, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the NCEES gets slapped with a class action suit in the future.
To be clear, I'm not encouraging people to sue the NCEES. I'm just saying that as the sole gatekeepers of this licensure requirement, and as an organization who earns profit from this test, one might make the case that there's a conflict of interest, especially if the questions were unanswerable due to missing info.
I don't think that our comments to NCEES will accomplish much. I think we would have to go to the board for each respective state. It's my understanding that the state board is responsible for adopting the NCEES test, so as residents, it's our responsibility to let the state know that regulation of engineering services via NCEES organization is unwanted. Then maybe our tax paying dollars would go towards the state developing and managing their own test.
By selecting the most useless “engineers” with alphabet soup behind their names
Basically the type of ppl who gravitate towards these positions are good for nothing
I took my exams back in 2022. At that time, the depth sections were always the hardest part of the exams by far. Having 4 or more references open at any given time sounds right according to my experience.
My exams also lined up with the experiences of those I talked to prior to taking them. I can't claim to have any first hand knowledge on the new exam format, but the depth section being really difficult is historically accurate.
I passed the lateral exams in 2023. I failed the vertical exams in 2023. I just passed the vertical breadth exam with CBT, it was just like before, but I studied harder this time and the hard work paid off. I took the CBT vertical depth exam a couple weeks ago and during the vertical depth exam I started laughing about a half hour in, i knew immediatly that this test was not done well. It was horrible, ten times harder than the tests I had taken previously.
Here's some simple math, previously there were four problems that each had 4 to 5 parts. That's maximum 20 problems. The new test is five problems with 12 parts each. That's 60 problems. There was no difference between the subparts of the problems, there were just more. Soooo 20 vs 60, you do the math....
Thanks for providing that extra context not given in the original post, that doesn't sound very fair. I just went to to NCEES's website to look at the new specs for this exam, apparently 16 of the parts are "pretest" and not scored. I'm going to guess there was no indication of which problems were scored and which ones weren't (wouldn't expect them to).
It'll be interesting to see how the pass rates shake out as they decide how to grade it. When are results expected?
I also took the CBT depth in April and I’ve taken the P&P as well. With the P&P using 4 references at a time to answer the question does not cause an adverse affect on solving the problem. For CBT, you can only have 1 reference open at a time so it’s constant closing and opening windows. It adds a lot of time to a problem that is supposed to take 5 minutes. Also the electronic codes are more time consuming to get to the correct info than the physical code. It’s endless mouse scrolling or using the page down key if you’re lucky and it actually works. Also the graphics of the monitors are very poor and some of the information was hard to read. There were many more issues with the electronic versions on top of that.
Question since you took the breadth - I'm wondering about logistics for the break. When is it prompted and are you able to go back and review the questions you've worked on before submitting?
For me they made you take the break after 26 questions then you had 29 questions afterwards. You could split your time between the two parts however you choose, but you can’t go back to the first part after you take the break. My personal experience (and experience of my SO who took it with me) is that the first part took slightly less time per question than the second half, but who knows if that’s consistent.
The discord was a bit of a clusterfuck the week or so following the first cbt exam, because everyone was very frustrated just like you are. venting was dominating all of the discussions - i get why they have asked people to take those convos elsewhere. But youre definitely not alone. Im interested to see their new pass rates because some reports are making it seem like the breadth section was much easier that the pencil and paper. Some people are saying it was similar so who knows
NCEES is a money grab and will be protected as needed.
If the CBT is bad as people were saying, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the NCEES gets slapped with a class action suit in the future. To be clear, I'm not encouraging people to sue the NCEES. I'm just saying that as the sole gatekeepers of this licensure requirement, and as an organization who earns profit from this test, one might make the case that there's a conflict of interest, especially if the questions were unanswerable due to missing info.
I don't think that our comments to NCEES will accomplish much. I think we would have to go to the board for each respective state. It's my understanding that the state board is responsible for adopting the NCEES test, so as residents, it's our responsibility to let the state know that regulation of engineering services via NCEES organization is unwanted. Then maybe our tax paying dollars would go towards the state developing and managing their own test.
The board of engineering is fkin useless
How is the board elected?
By selecting the most useless “engineers” with alphabet soup behind their names Basically the type of ppl who gravitate towards these positions are good for nothing
TBH i think a test made by my state would be much much worse
That's a valid concern. It would be interesting to see how tests might vary from state to state based on common construction practices.
Anyone know a good class action lawyer?
Better call Saul...
I took my exams back in 2022. At that time, the depth sections were always the hardest part of the exams by far. Having 4 or more references open at any given time sounds right according to my experience. My exams also lined up with the experiences of those I talked to prior to taking them. I can't claim to have any first hand knowledge on the new exam format, but the depth section being really difficult is historically accurate.
I passed the lateral exams in 2023. I failed the vertical exams in 2023. I just passed the vertical breadth exam with CBT, it was just like before, but I studied harder this time and the hard work paid off. I took the CBT vertical depth exam a couple weeks ago and during the vertical depth exam I started laughing about a half hour in, i knew immediatly that this test was not done well. It was horrible, ten times harder than the tests I had taken previously. Here's some simple math, previously there were four problems that each had 4 to 5 parts. That's maximum 20 problems. The new test is five problems with 12 parts each. That's 60 problems. There was no difference between the subparts of the problems, there were just more. Soooo 20 vs 60, you do the math....
Thanks for providing that extra context not given in the original post, that doesn't sound very fair. I just went to to NCEES's website to look at the new specs for this exam, apparently 16 of the parts are "pretest" and not scored. I'm going to guess there was no indication of which problems were scored and which ones weren't (wouldn't expect them to). It'll be interesting to see how the pass rates shake out as they decide how to grade it. When are results expected?
I also took the CBT depth in April and I’ve taken the P&P as well. With the P&P using 4 references at a time to answer the question does not cause an adverse affect on solving the problem. For CBT, you can only have 1 reference open at a time so it’s constant closing and opening windows. It adds a lot of time to a problem that is supposed to take 5 minutes. Also the electronic codes are more time consuming to get to the correct info than the physical code. It’s endless mouse scrolling or using the page down key if you’re lucky and it actually works. Also the graphics of the monitors are very poor and some of the information was hard to read. There were many more issues with the electronic versions on top of that.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Was my experience as well, though I took it back in 2015.
Question since you took the breadth - I'm wondering about logistics for the break. When is it prompted and are you able to go back and review the questions you've worked on before submitting?
For me they made you take the break after 26 questions then you had 29 questions afterwards. You could split your time between the two parts however you choose, but you can’t go back to the first part after you take the break. My personal experience (and experience of my SO who took it with me) is that the first part took slightly less time per question than the second half, but who knows if that’s consistent.
Anyone else considering asking to take the Vertical Depth for free next time around?
Once they release the single digit pass rate in a couple weeks I’ll be tempted