Ch. E. Reference Manual for PE exam - which one is best? 2

[dogtop]

Dear Eng-Tipers,

I would like to know opinions regarding the suitability of the Chemical Engineering Reference Manual, by either of two authors, for the PE Exam?

The authors are:

1. Michael R. Lindeburg

2. Randall N. Robinson

Regards and TIA.

 

[rbcoulter]

Use the NCEES exam practice books at

http://www.ncees.org.

These are the people that make the exam.

 

[dogtop]

Thanks. That's good for examples and worked solutions.
I still need a Reference Manual. Any opinions?
TIA

 

[rbcoulter]

Again. Your best reference manual is the FE handbook (yes it's good for the PE exam also) provided free of charge in PDF format at:

http://www.ncees.org/exams/study_materials/fe_handbook/

 

[jwysmooth]

My opinion, (and you know what they are like)do lots of practice problems. I used the Robinson book to during my practice to learn how to do the problems, it was good, but I don't know about the Lindeburg book.

The references I took for to the exam make very little difference, because I hardly used them. I may have referred to them 2 or 3 times during the test. Most of the questions had all the information you needed stated in the problem.

Advice...during my practice exams, I would read all 10 problems available for the morning portion and rate them A, B or C. A's were for those problems I knew I could do in 30 minutes or so, B's were those that might take an hour, but I was pretty sure I could do them, C's I didn't want to touch, they took too long. Then I would do all 10 problems and time each one. During the checking stage not only would I check my answeres, I would check my preliminary rating. You will learn to evaluate the exam questions very quickly. When I took my actual test, I spent the first 15 minutes just reading the questions and rating them. I think I ended up with four A's, three B's and three C's. I used the same procedure for the afternoon, multiple choice section.

It worked, I made a 93 on the exam.
Good luck,
jwy

 

[greenche]

I used the Lindeburg book, but have not seen the Robinson book for comparison. There is definitely value in having a reference book with a good index. If you get one of these books to use, you should use it as your reference when solving practice problems to become familiar with it so you can find something you need during the exam quickly.

jwy, it sounds like the exam format for chemical has changed since you took it. It is currently 80 questions (40 morning/40 afternoon), all multiple choice. I used a similar strategy of rating the difficulty of questions, skipping ones I felt were more difficult, and then come back to them later if I had extra time.

 

[dogtop]

Thanks a lot to ALL for the suggestions, comments, and references.
It is time to burn the candlelight!
Thanks again.

 

[skearse]

I took the exam one of the first years they went to the all muliple choice format. When I took the exam I looked around for a review course, and there's not a whole lot out there. I ended up using these guys:

http://www.pelicense.org/chemdesc.html

and have to say it was very helpful. It's self-paced, so it takes some discipline, but when I got to the exam, I have to say that compared to the study materials the tst was a piece of cake.