FS CBT Exam Experiences

In NC only 48% passed the FS. It is still math intensive via some straight math and others are word problems. Make sure you know sine, cosine, etc. before you ever even think of scheduling. Study up on sectionalised land along with some meets and bounds. Some General survey law is in there. Study up on general photogrammetry and procedures. Study up on survey reductions and fix procedures.

Been waiting on a exam review class here in NC or a surrounding state.

Seems more money and time is spent supporting those in the business then trying to help and encourage new blood to enter.

While I support the degree requirements and education, if a state is going to make such a requirement then money should be spent to ensure everyone has access to such college programs that meet board standards.

Having a degree though does not make one a good surveyor or in other cases lawyers and doctors.

Check The NCEES FS Exam Site

http://ncees.org/exams/fs-exam/

Download:

FS exam specifications .pdf

FS Reference Handbook

Then take:

FS Practice Exams online

However if you do not know the previous written material what makes you consider a computer based exam?

Paul in PA

Check The NCEES FS Exam Site

Thank you for your insight. I apologize for my ignorance, I am just starting to get back into the material and devise a study strategy for the new (shortened) CBT exam. Your suggestions definitely help.

My question for you is: seeing as there is only one practice exam offered, can it be assumed that if I know how to solve every one of them that I will know enough to pass the mathematics portion?

Thank you again for your help; it is truly appreciated.

Thank you so much for your insight. I am trying to get in contact with the association in my state (IL) to see if there are review courses as well.

Check The NCEES FS Exam Site

It is my understanding that the practice exam questions change. I suggest you study and take written practice exams until you feel ready, then take the online exam in a timed format. If you do not do well you need further study not more opportunities to take the computer exam. I would suggest not retaking the computer exam for at least a month.

It is also my understanding that when you take the actual exam, a low score requires a certain wait time period before retaking.

Paul in PA

I took the new and improved computerized FS several weeks ago and found it rather difficult. But please, please read anything I write at your own risk because my advice has probably been the root cause of who knows how many suicides, divorces, alcoholic derailments and the like. And then I ain't the brightest crayon in the box by any magical enhancement of the color spectrum. I always avoided math classes in college and found the study of math tedious and numbing. No one bothered to tell me that by the time you get to NUMBER THEORY you leave numbers behind and math becomes sort of interesting and linguistic again. Neither did I bother to find out that math principles actually work in the real world and become sort of cool. So naturally I'm a buzzkilling English major who went straight from teaching high school literature and hammering kids with all those important grammatical hammers to surveying land. I mean, as a teacher I didn't really give tests and quizzes and always found it nigh impossible to rank a student's understanding of, say, Portrait Of The Artist..., on a scale between 1 and 100. We have long since forgotten that the relatively YOUNG trend toward scholastic testing and ranking is a technology, like any technology, that can be used and abused. (Who, for instance, might we say had the greatest impact on American Education in the 20th century? John Dewey? Northrop Frye? Noam Chomsky? John Holt? Neil Postman? Probably not. Probably the creators of the SAT test and the GRE and the IQ and even the FS and FE. We have reorganized our curriculums to accommodate the tests, just as we have reorganized our political discourse to accommodate the media conglomerates. And I for one moved on to another line of work. [End Rant. Apologies.])

Doubtlessly not the quickest route to fame and fortune this slouching toward The Surveying Profession I've trod--by the by--but I've been amazed the number of surveyors I've met who've defected from other disciplines. All that looking out the classroom window on crisp Autumn days wishing I was out roaming the hills, I suppose.

And but so I'm roaming already and I should point out that I certainly felt the questions in the FIRST HALF of the NCEES FS were directed toward the creased jeans fresh from class Engineering Student. The smart kind of Engineering Student. Calculus, energy, gravity, physics, and some questions the central orbits of which I never rightly discerned. There will be a fair amount of questions--even if you ARE that Engineering Student--that will make you feel like maybe the testing center sat you down in front of the wrong computer for the wrong test. (Another quietly unnerving piece of the new and improved testing atmosphere is the ignorance of the proctors, like the perfect bureaucrat introducing you to a room with a shower they know nothing about.) And those questions are likely to come right at the beginning and quite possibly throw you into a tailspin.

The second fifty-five questions felt more commonly survey-ish and I found them rather simple, really, finishing them in less than an hour.

Of course it's been said on these forums any number of times (as I said: I'm a bit of lurker and not much of a poster) that these sorts of tests are really less about the subject matter than about your ability to take and endure and work within the strange and secret technology of the Test. Keep in mind that there is a heavy psychological element to sitting down and plowing "successfully" through, but keep as well tucked safely in the half-lit shadows of your strategy that there IS in fact a Subject and you ought to know something about said Subject. The basic rules of elementary STUDYING standards still apply and you would be wise to invest quality time in those standards, test or no. "We fill pre-existing forms," writes Frank Bidart, "and when we fill them we change them and are changed."

So but then I might say that the delicate balance of the two elements as built and personalized through the strengths and weaknesses of your psyche will dictate your successful strategy, probably.

The good news of course is that no more must you bite your nails for three months awaiting word of your success or failure. I got the little green light in less than a week and it was really rather tiny and hard to read and anti-climactic.

You have an interesting background. Thank you for sharing! May I ask what you personally did/what resources you used to study for the exam?

Check The NCEES FS Exam Site

I wish the questions would change each time. According to the NCEES site, it is the same 50 questions each time you take the test (unless I read that wrong). These questions are mostly the same ones from the bound book and I have practically memorized the answers :-/

Source: https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/store/category/FS/product/fs-practice-exam

Check The NCEES FS Exam Site

> I wish the questions would change each time. According to the NCEES site, it is the same 50 questions each time you take the test (unless I read that wrong). These questions are mostly the same ones from the bound book and I have practically memorized the answers :-/
>
> Source: https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/store/category/FS/product/fs-practice-exambr >

also from their website:

NCEES conducts a content review for the FE and FS exams every six to eight
years. This process includes developing and administering a content survey
and analyzing the survey results. This is a detailed process. Each step contains
checks and balances to ensure that the resulting exams are fair to examinees
based on the coursework that they take in their engineering curriculum and
to provide the licensing boards with an adequate measure of each examinee’s
minimum competency to begin the licensure process.
Current exam specifications for the FE and FS exams are located online at
ncees.org/exams.
The FE and FS exams each consist of 110 items. Using Item Response Theory,
a commonly used statistical process for high stakes exams, the exams are
constructed using a linear-on-the-fly (LOFT) algorithm. This means that all
examinees will be required to answer 110 questions; however, each examinee
will not have the same 110 questions. The algorithm will assemble your unique
exam within the same specification framework (i.e., the same number of
questions per topic area) and the same relative level of difficulty.
Each exam includes a limited number of pretest items that will not be scored
and will not have an impact on your results. This is common practice within
high-stakes testing and allows NCEES to evaluate the pretest items for
potential use in future exams. These items are randomly placed within the
exam and are not identifiable as pretest items.