> I don't think so!!!!
Think again.
I took the October 2005 PS exam without reference materials in four hours as part of the 17 person NCEES committee that sets the cut score and scored an 85 (as opposed to a 94 with reference materials 18 months earlier).
Your mileage may vary, but IMHO as they are currently established (as a test of minimum competency), both the FS and PS exam are embarrassingly easy.
> > Your mileage may vary, but IMHO as they are currently established (as a test of minimum competency), both the FS and PS exam are embarrassingly easy.
I think the FS is as good a barometer for demonstration of grasping the Fundamentals as you can get with an 8 hr test on 1 subject. Both the FS & FE are often mentioned as being more difficult than the subsequent PS & PE exams, probably because of the closed-book format. I do agree that the PS in current format is embarassingly easy. Some of the quest's were literally 20 second glossary lookup answers. There's only so much that can be done to demonstrate minimum competency in an 6-10 hr duration, but def seems more can be done than present format...
Bryan
Reread some of the posts. Texas WAS and IS closed book, and I passed them both, so did Brooks Cooper and most every other Texas Surveyor on this board, and yes, I had most all of the definitions and formulas memorized as I only used a 42 on the test for 95% of the questions.
> Your mileage may vary, but IMHO as they are currently established (as a test of minimum competency), both the FS and PS exam are embarrassingly easy.
I have to agree, especially when I hear stories of what earlier test takers had to endure.
Hate to think what that may say about me.:-(
> What all the people on here that think they could have passed anyways......closed book!!
>
> Is you know everything there. Is to know about:
>
> FEMA
>
> Alta/ascm
>
> NGS
>
> Every formula
You don't need to know every formula, just be able to recognize what a given formula is used for. I'm sure they will still provide the typical unnecessary sheets of 300 formulas as they do today.
> Every legal definition known to man!!
>
> !!!!!
>
> I don't think so!!!!:-(
I took the exam in 2008 and I used one reference, one time to verify a definition. The rest of my suitcase of crap sat there untouched. I did forget my FEMA information and when those questions came I was able to answer them through process of elimination. The National exam is not that difficult IMHO if you have glanced through a few practice a exams and just brush up on your Outline of topics as provided.
Kris
If the 42 had been available when I took the test, it would have been disallowed then as it is today, but for a different reason. Then anything that did not clear any programming when turned off was not allowed. I used a TI-36 Solar and an HP 32E. And did not really need the 32E.
Stephen
I could have done it with a $3 calculator from Wal-Mart that did sin, cos, and tan, but I had a 42. However, it had no programs. The two 48's that I took did, but I only used one of them once for an area that was fairly involved and I wanted to have plenty of time. 😉
Bryan
> Reread some of the posts. Texas WAS and IS closed book, and I passed them both, so did Brooks Cooper and most every other Texas Surveyor on this board, and yes, I had most all of the definitions and formulas memorized as I only used a 42 on the test for 95% of the questions.
I took it the last time you could use a 48 on the test. But I never ended up using it. I used just a TI-36x for the entire test. My opinion still stands today that it was too easy of a test. I couldnt imagine even needing a book on it.
Or maybe it is just that Texas surveyors are smarter than everyone else 🙂
I took it in 1989.
I went into the exam with 5-6 books, an HP-41 and a TI-?? (it wasn't programmable).
I had a notebook with formulas & misc info, Blacks Law, the Manual, a route book, Evidence & Procedures, and one other other I don't remember.... all tabbed...
The proctor came around checking everyones calculators, materials, etc. and when he reached me, he made me put away the TI because it wasn't on the approved list. The 41 was allowed.
There were some guys who came to the exam with boxes of books, one guy even had 3-4 crates of books stacked on a handtruck....yes a handtruck....
One guy had 5-6 calculators....
I passed... 😉
Geez!!
You guys are lucky. When I took the exam you were furnished a book with trig tables and logrithms and used them to do your calcs, unless you happened to have access to a Monroe hand crank to do the calcs with. No electronic calculators such as the Friden or Marchant were allowed. We had to compute a solar observation, design a ditch for irrigation to carry a certain amount of water to irrigate a certain acreage, calc areas by DMD, and other everyday things that may come up in practice. These were an exam for maximum competency, not minimum as they are now.
Mr. Dowdell....could you bring your laptop?;-)
Sound pretty tough. I'm not sure some of the old-timers can understand the GPS calculations, but I wonder sometimes if the new guys shouldn't have to hand-calc a solar observation or run coodinates by hand to appreciate some of their current tools and to understand how some of the calculations were made.
Thanks for the wake-up call for some of the guys that think it is all a lot harder today.
Tom
