Mechanical PE Sample Examination

In terms of exam preparation, nothing beats practicing. A key component to this was taking a practice exam. I have read several reviews that said that the practice exam is too dificult in comparison to the actual exam, but really that is a false assessment. THough the problems are in fact more time consuming and dificult, it is representative, and if you can take and pass the practice exam, you will breeze through the real thing. I highly recommend this product to anyone preparing for the PE.

I purchased this exam book along with Lindeburg's practice problems Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam: A Companion to the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual, 12th Editionand reference manualMechanical Engineering Reference Manual for the PE Exam (11th Edition). The exam is very similar to the actual NCEES exam in format and content. It is actually more difficult than the NCEES exam but don't let that fact cause you to become complacent. The PE exam is tough and alot of people fail it. With that said, the way I used this practice exam was to treat it like it was exam day. About 2 weeks before the exam I went to the library with my calculator, stop watch, and reference materials. I opened the book and exactly four hours later closed it. I spent the next four hours examining my results and where I made mistakes. The next day I did the same thing with the afternoon portion of the test. I did not crack a peak at the exam beforehand so I had no idea what the problems were going to be. Of course I had spent the previous two months reviewing the reference book and doing the practice problems. This gave me the necessary skills to use my time wisely during the actual exam. You only have four hours for 40 problems, that's 6 minutes per problem. If you've wasted 4 minutes on a particular question and are not near the solution, it's best to move on and if you have time, come back to it. It's not only what you know but you have to have the ability to look things up quickly and use your time wisely. I also used the same study method with the example exam available from NCEES (which is an absolute necessity). I passed the April 09 exam so my method was effective for me. BTW, there is a sample exam available from Kaplan authored by Hamelink. Don't waste your money on this, it is terrible.

This is worth buying, and taking about 1 month before the test. This test was much harder than the actual test- I could only get about half of the problems complete, and I had time to spare for the real exam. But it gives you good practice in frantically looking up the required information. I would like it to be easier like the real test, because I was panicing for about a week after taking this practice exam.