Last minute tips for principles and practice test

[BigE]

Welcome aboard Brian.

While I can’t proffer any personal advice having never taken the exams…..
But, a common thread amongst these brethren seems to be to get a good night’s rest before and don’t try to cram the night before.

If I would have had that advice [and listened] back in the day, you would be hearing from “Dr. Big E.” Maybe Dr.Dr.Big E. 🙂

Best of luck to you Sir!!!

E

[JB]

One of the best tips I ever got for test taking in general is to go through the entire test, front to back, knocking off the gimme questions. Then go back to the beginning and start again doing the questions which take a little more thought or calcs. You will find that some of the gimmes will actually answer some of the more difficult questions. This builds confidence and gets you rolling. You will also find that the ones you passed over are now familiar and when you revisit them the answer will come to you. This is a form of “sleeping on it”.
This also helps with your time management as you will not be spending 35 minutes on an early, complicated problem and run out of time with a boatload of much easier questions you haven’t even see yet. Much better to nail a bunch of easy questions and miss a couple of tough ones.
One caveat: Be very careful with your bubbles on the answer sheet!

Also remember that you have been given EVERY answer. It’s one of them choices right in front of you! If you get stuck on a problem that has a numerical answer, plug the answers in to your calcs and back them into your problem. Start with the highest value, then the lowest. Elimination will let you drill down on a solid answer pretty quickly.

[ken-salzmann]

A few more basics:

Get a good night’s sleep the night before. This week is not a time to party.

Don’t bother cramming; it is too late. By now you should be reviewing and refreshing.

Make sure you know how to get where you are going. Leave time for the accident or construction back-up that could happen. Have the car gassed up. Minimize outside stress.

Eat a light breakfast and lunch – but eat something.

Have your information organized and familiar. Don’t try to learn a new calculator. Have your pencils.

You have to pass the test, not ace it; just do your best.

If you pass, great. Then, the real work begins.

If you do not pass, this test should tell you what you have to work harder on for the next one.

Good luck.

Ken

[Joseph R. LaBranche]

Bring an identical backup calculator.

Be efficient with your time and don’t let up, the hours can go by quickly.

[Ralph Perez]

Rule number be prepared. A lot of these quick tips mean absolutely nothing if you don’t know the subject matter. If you did your due diligence it won’t matter, also if you are not prepared; it won’t matter.

I give you 2 examples which happened to me.
1. The day of the principles and practices I stopped to have breakfast before the exam. I ate some waffles and had a coffee. Apparently the butter was bad and 10 minutes before the exam I got the runs.

2. As it was time to take the exam I noticed the name of an individual on the roster who at the time was running a Survey business and professing to be licensed. I looked around the room and didn’t see him. So I asked my buddy out loudly if he saw W.W. sitting in the classroom. He said no very loudly at which point some guy looked up in a panic. There were 12 names on the roster and 12 people seated, in other words this rat bastard was trying to pay someone to take the test for him. I would have followed up with the proctor and the Board but I didn’t want to rattle myself further.

I sat down and 41 minutes later I was finished. Didn’t even bother to check and I don’t think I got any wrong. The Proctor asked me If I was giving up and I said, “no, I’m finished”

Another Myth, examiners bias. According to some test taking gurus there should statistically be the same number of answers for each letter. ie equal number of A answers B answers…etc.
And you should review your answers and adjust or some such nonsense.
That weekend I took all three exams. The last one was the NY State Specific. I had finished early and instead of leaving, I sat in the classroom twiddling my thumbs. While sitting there the thought crossed my mind of this examiner’s bias BS, so I preceded to review the exam and change answers based on this voodoo, as it turns out I failed it by one.
In NY State if you fail it by one or two, you are invited to Albany to review and contest the exam.
After reviewing the exam and my answers, I realized that by not getting up and leaving after I finished, I had second guessed myself into a 68 from what would have likely been a 90+.

The moral of this story is.. Practice and hard work breed confidence, luck has nothing to do with it. Get there on time settle your nerves focus and get to work.

Good Luck

[C Billingsley]

The only advice I can give is don’t get too stressed out, even if you come across a question that you know absolutely nothing about. Remember, there are so many topics to be covered that there will only be a couple of questions on each topic. As someone else said, you only need to pass, not achieve perfection. The person who scores a 70% will get a license exactly like the person who scores a 100%, except for the name.

Also, if you just found this site for the first time, remember it. Some of the best surveyors from all over the world post here regularly, and you can always find help for almost any surveying problem you encounter.

Good luck!

[Avery]

Brian-
I took the exam this last spring; everybody’s advice on here is pretty much spot on. In my opinion JB’s advice on test taking strategy is one of the best things you can implement. Go through the whole exam and answer only the easy questions first, you have to get all of the easy one’s right. If you read a question and it seems like it’s going to take a bit to solve, mark it and come back to it. I did a system of 1 dot next to the question if I thought it would take me 5 minutes or less to solve, 2 dots for 5 – 10 minutes and 3 dot’s if I was completely in the dark about a question (fortunately there were only one or two of those). After going through the entire exam and answering the easy ones and marking the tougher ones, I went back and did the “one dot” questions, then “two dot”, etc. This system basically prioritizes your time on getting the easiest ones first and not wasting your time on the lengthy/more difficult questions.

My second piece of advice is to make sure that you know the material that’s in the “PS Reference Handbook” that the NCEES provides you on the morning of the exam. As you know, the exam is closed book now, so that reference handbook is all you get. You don’t necessarily have to have everything memorized, but you need to know where in the book all of the info is. In the last principles and practices exam there were probably at least half a dozen questions that could be answered by looking up the info directly in that handbook.

Also, a good portion of the exam is on the “theory” of surveying, legal principles, ethics, etc. There was almost no math, I think I used my calculator on less that 10 questions.

Good luck!

[exbert]

Avery nailed it. Remember “I don’t test well” is BS. You either know it or you don’t. I also agree about not changing your answers. Just go through it with grading the three types of questions and when you’re done, get up and leave. I also don’t think you should cram before the morning session. I do think it is great to have your references in your car, so you can look up some of the ones you were on the fence about – it can really boost your confidence or… Good Luck and remember this isn’t rocket-surgery!

[Lamon Miller]

Back in the day when I took the test it was given in one location on a college campus that I was not familiar with two hours from my home. The day before the test I visited the campus found the building and room no. and the closest parking lot then got a room in a nearby motel. I left very early got an easy parking spot and strolled to the test building.