Mark Indzeris, post: 340180, member: 1019 wrote: Do you currently work for a Land Surveyor? If not, then volunteer your extra time to work with one, in the office, in the field, drafting/ measuring, whatever. Are you getting a plethora of experience at your current job? It sounds like you have the academic experience, now I think you may need more on the practical side. What is your work history?
You need to get in the field, dig for corners find some monuments that you reject and under why you rejected them and why you held the ones you found.
Not sure how the new test being on the computer is,. Not sure if you can skip and come back. My only suggestion (if you can skip around) is to go through the test and read the questions. If you can answer it immediately or within a few seconds than do answer it. But if you have to do some calculations that take more time, hold off on it and move on to the next question. Then come back and do the next hardest questions and the last questions should be the ones you don't know or take the longest to figure out. This helps is many ways. First off you have answered probably the majority of the questions. Then you might come across another question that helps you solve one of the harder ones. Those harder ones will kill your time and you could used your time more wisely getting more answered. One other thing is to continue to practice and practice and practice. Good luck and study hard.
he does, but that has nothing to do with the FS exam....
I am not sure how much the Wattles book with help with the exam, but once you pass, it will be a tremendous help with descriptions. I'd be sure to pick up a copy.
Ken
Do you have a copy of http://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/FS-January-2014_with-ranges.pdf&apos ;">this?
There are precious little boundary surveying related questions on the FS and, if I remember correctly, the ones that were on the exam were incredible basic and very easy to overthink: How many acres in the N1/2 of the NE1/4, what's the difference between an express and implied easement, etc.. You can miss all the cadastral related questions and still pass the exam.
The other stuff adds up quick though. Only you know what areas gave you problems; but if you've gone through the Brown books in college, I'd suspect you're good to go on boundary related questions, in fact you may be overthinking them. I'd suggest concentrating on areas like business, GIS, photogrammetry, datums, curves, etc.. I know when I took it there were three or four questions on matrix algebra and the same number on grammar - that's 6-8% of the exam right there and could easily be the difference between passing and failing
Ken Salzmann, post: 340196, member: 398 wrote: I am not sure how much the Wattles book with help with the exam, but once you pass, it will be a tremendous help with descriptions. I'd be sure to pick up a copy.
Ken
He said he spends most of this time drafting.
For the math portion, get a pile of yellow ledger pads and fill them up with hand computations from area by triangles and every possible know two parts of a curve and compute the other parts. Trig and compound equations and law of sines and etc, intersecting with lines curves and area computations.
Read anything and everything about the fundamental surveying techniques and business of surveying.
Give up mass media and TV until after you have lived on surveying and pass the test..........
good luck
Here is the best resource I know of
If you can do the workbook you should be able to pass the test IMO.
Field time would help to get your intuition for measurements up.
There is a lot of stuff in Writing Legal Descriptions that deals with understanding what controlling elements in a boundary description are. In other words, it is as important a help to understand how to read and interpret a description as it is to write one.
A terrific resource, but, a warning. Make the coffee strong.
Jeff_3317, post: 340143, member: 10618 wrote: Hello Everyone,
I have taken the fundamentals exam a couple of times without passing. I am now roughly two and a half years out of college and want to attempt the exam again. I have used NCEES study and practice exams and still have not succeeded in passing. I was wondering if anyone has any advice or if anyone knows of better study materials or classes or seminars that would aid in studying. I would appreciate any help! Thank you
How many times under the new format?
More personal, how badly did you actually do?
I can appreciate, the inability to get into the swing of the testing procedure. In high school I did excellent in SATs and other standardized testing, but totally bombed certain college level exams. The university had professionals that could help and I learned some stress relaxation techniques. Not 100% effective but there was improvement. Because I had the test taking skills for the type of NCEES exams I flew through them, but can make the switch to understand some of you possible problems.
Have you fully evaluated your failure reasons? If there is some area that your education was not effective that has to be approached completely different from the exam flow difficulties. Retaking should provide some improvement each time with each retake. Without a sitdown with a professional by you, this board can provide a lot of shots in the dark.
One shot in the dark, assume every problem requires only three lines of calculation. If after those three lines you cannot pickout the least wrong of four answers, immediately move on. Once you get through the exam then go back. This may resolve the getting it all done problem to getting enough answers right. An answer to a question you did not get to read is almost always wrong.
You have so many hours for so many questions on the exam. The practice exams have fewer problems and should be completed in proportionally less time, so practice it that way. One problem I see is that per my understanding the practice exams have limited difference in questions, so multiple retakes of the same old same old is less beneficial to actually improving your skills.
Paul in PA.
I took this test, twice, last year and I have a bachelor's degree in surveying. The new CBT FS exam is no easy test. I always wrote down everything I could remember in the parking lot and study those exercises back at home. There are many questions you won't find in the practice tests or even in the Reference manual, which is why they urge you to have multiple sources of study.
As stated before, study/practice those weak areas you got on the test. If the math portion was a problem, brush up on your math skills however basic they could be. The visual exercises can be intimidating so do as many as you can to develop your problem solving skills and to hopefully learn to manage your time. I personally read (front cover to back cover) and did 99% of all exercises of the Reference manual (6th edition) and I found that helped me the most. I also had both of Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles and Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location for all the legal portion.
I also strongly urge you to get Land Development Handbook 3rd Edition, ACSM's Definitions of Surveying and Associated Terms and Surveying with Construction Application, 8th Edition (for this one you can get the paperback version for about $40 bucks.)
FWIW - I took the FS & PS with the old traditional booklet test, but in the last few years took the Series 7, 66 & 3 securities exams in a computerized format at an exam center. I found it much more difficult to use the "do the easy question first and go back" method on the computerized exam. With the old booklet you could easily flip ahead and see the question format for half a dozen questions at one glance, with the computerized it was one question on the screen at a time (and sometimes where there were multiple question from one set of particulars) so it was harder (at least for me) to move ahead and pick out the 'easy' questions quickly.
On the other hand, when I took the Series 7 Exam the firm I was with gave you one shot to pass by week 16 of the training program and if you failed they fired you the next day. The potential to lose a $75K/year training salary + benefits was a great incentive...ask you boss to fire you if you fail again, it's a proven testing incentive program 😀
James Fleming, post: 340288, member: 136 wrote: FWIW - I took the FS & PS with the old traditional booklet test, but in the last few years took the Series 7, 66 & 3 securities exams in a computerized format at an exam center. I found it much more difficult to use the "do the easy question first and go back" method on the computerized exam. With the old booklet you could easily flip ahead and see the question format for half a dozen questions at one glance, with the computerized it was one question on the screen at a time (and sometimes where there were multiple question from one set of particulars) so it was harder (at least for me) to move ahead and pick out the 'easy' questions quickly.
On the other hand, when I took the Series 7 Exam the firm I was with gave you one shot to pass by week 16 of the training program and if you failed they fired you the next day. The potential to lose a $75K/year training salary + benefits was a great incentive...ask you boss to fire you if you fail again, it's a proven testing incentive program 😀
James is correct on the "do the easy questions first", I found I could knock out 75% of the questions real quick. I did not take the computer based test though. Do they allow you to skip and come back later? Also spend a lot of time programming your calculator but don't just punch in the program, learn what the program is doing. This helped tremendously.
I used the Surveyors Reference Manual and Surveying Solved Problems for quite a bit of my preparation for the Fundamentals exam. I'm also a fan of the HP calculators. Used 2 HP 33S loaded with programs and equations for the Fundamentals exam and 2 HP 35S loaded to the gills for the Principles Exam.
Loading as many equations as possible will make shorter, less stress work out of a lot of the questions. I don't recall having to do any long hand math as everything and anything I thought might be on the exam was loaded on my calculators.
And from what I remember, the fundamentals exam is a broad stroke test. They used to give you an outline with the breakdown of questions per category and percent. Make sure you are covering all topics while studying. I really felt that the Surveyor Reference Manual does a great job of breaking everything down in an organized, easy to follow fashion. It became the base for me. If there were areas that were still difficult after going through it, I bought more specialized reference material in that area. And Surveying Solved Problems was a great tool for repetition.
They allow you to skip and come back to later by a method of 'flagging' each question on screen and then hitting 'next' to view the next question. This ends up being time consuming and it's not until you flag all questions all the way to the end of the process that you'll know which are the easy/short questions. And even doing that, some questions can be answered by the help of the very previous question before it. If the exam was on paper as James Fleming said, you can flip through the pages in an instant and have a more visual, quantifiable way to tackle the test.
One thing I did at the very end (in the roughly 20 minutes I had remaining...) was to go back to math problems that I had skipped and plug in one of the multiple choice answers into the equation to see which answer provided one of the givens in the question. It's time consuming but if you've got a little time at the end it's a sure fire way to confirm a couple questions you weren't sure on.
Travel to the testing site, stay in a nearby hotel, and familiarize yourself with the testing center. Get up early on exam day and walk or do something else physical before the exam and be sure to keep your body in motion during your lunch break as well.
I'd be cautious about switching to an HP if you used a TI in college.
Did you have enough time to answer all the questions the last time you took the exam?
If you can work a 3 point curve long hand, with only a $3 calculator and formulas from your head, then you'll pass the test. If you can't, then you can't.
When I took this, programmable calculators were expressly forbidden but formula cheat sheets were not.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.