California Surveyors Forums

Since I haven't found anything in print I am making a couple of assumptions then asking questions in relation to those assumptions.

I heard that the National test is now closed book.
That NCEES is supplying any required reference material.

Has anyone here, ie the board, reviewed the new test(s) and or the reference material.

Are persons taking the test allowed to review the reference material before the test or is it closed material until the test starts.

If more than a few pages is the reference material in the same order as the order of the questions or will some have to leaf thru the booklet every time.

Is this the direction the State spec test will take.

As posted by NCEES on their web site:

http://ncees.org/about-ncees/news/exam- ... pril-2013/

Interesting. I fail to see the relevance of the accelerated cost recovery system chart. Isn't that established by the IRS and I think you can deduct $500,000 per year now, and if you are running a company that spends over $500k/year on equipt you better have a MS in business and a handful of tax lawyers on call.

I have to wonder, with a closed book test, how many surveyors will miss having their copy of Definitions of Surveying and Related Terms at their side.

Another item with multiple guess tests is I remember when solving a boundary question citing the references we used, can't do that any more. I would think that would be of importance especially since there are some who think Brown's book is "out of date" and disagree with his rules. We have no idea from which camp the person(s) creating the questions side with. Just on this board a PL question can create 50 plus replies with varying opinions. It brings to mind how just recently a State line issue was resolved one way in TN and the opposite (and I think wrong) way in SC.

IMO it's sad that the exam for this profession is becoming a test to see who has the fastest retrieval from their photographic memory.

maybe because now they test the individual, not the ability to cite a reference

Do you know the definition of every term in "Definitions of surveying and related terms", how about the SMA got that memorized, all of the BLM Manual of Surveying...........

Our profession covers many things, how to operate EDMS, data collectors, gps units, various software programs, construction staking, boundary, topo, water boundaries, SMA, and the list goes on. Are you a proficient in ALL of these? Can anyone be?

Are we going to continue as Land Survey Professionals, or will we become limited to specific areas of expertise like doctors and lawyers. You won't find a brain surgeon doing plastic surgery and vice-versa. Is that what you want? As it is now some politically connected money grabbers decided that Land Surveyors need to spend thousands of dollars for schooling and repeated testing to survey govt sectionalized land, and the CE's got the same restrictions for doing SWPP's by a politically connected company. What is next, special training and licenses for GIS, GPS, use of electronic msmt devices, const staking...........

IMO a "Professional" Land Surveyor has a couple of areas he likes and specializes in and the other areas, as a professional, knows either to avoid due to lack of having done that in recent years or knows where to find the information to do the work properly.

What we are doing is dumbing down the test to reflect the limited knowledge of the employees hired by the testing companies. Soon nothing will be allowed to be taken in, even now scales are not allowed for the State specific, is it needed, who knows except those who wrote test. If you read the rules the minimum wage guard dogs at the testing centers can keep you from bringing anything into the test area that they determine you should not have. You have to turn your pockets inside out, even one car key is banned, but their locker key is ok. A woman was chastised for removing a erring and putting it in her pocket. If they don't like your coat you can't wear it in. And some forms of reference material transport are ok others not. Think TSA only dumber.

Maybe banning everything will be better, than we won't have banned and approved calculators and the professional exam will become as efficient as the Federal schools proficiency tests.

is there a like button for that last comment

I encourage anyone to be a part of the process. Due to the abuse/subversion of the process has resulted in what happens at the test sites. The testing companies DO NOT develop the exams. The exams are developed by your peers. To truely understand the exam process, you must be involved. It is interesting to look at the exam statistic's over the past years and compare the results of the 3 different styles of exams that have been offered. By percentage, the results have not changed much. A professional has to know their limitations and also has to step back and get the whole picture. Sometimes that means be willing to listen to both sides and changing your mind/view. Education does not stop with passing the exam, it is an ongoing process throughout your career.

Anyone who frequents this board knows the myriad of responses to a boundary question and that many times the courts have ruled differently on similar cases in courts.

In those cases how does the test candidate know whether his answer will be accepted or not if he cannot cite the reference he used?

Citing references was sop in the older testing.

And I get the impression that the State board of CA does not even get to review NCEES tests that are used to qualify our surveyors.

Citing references as an answer has not been excepted on the Calif exam for the past 20 years. The Calif exam test entry level minimun compentence. Both the national the state exam must be passed to become licensed. It is true, we must maintain a broad range of knowledge and must stay ahead of changes/rulings by the court, which makes a good case for contiuning education.

So if citing references "has not been excepted on the Calif exam for the past 20 years" how does a candidate qualify his answer by citing the reference he used on a multiple guess test?

"What we are doing is dumbing down the test to reflect the limited knowledge of the employees hired by the testing companies."

This is one of the most ill-informed opinions that I have read in a long time. It would behove you to get involved in the process or refrain from commenting on it on a public forum with such a lack of knowledge regarding the process.

Edward could not have described the inaccuracy of your statement about dumbing down the test any better. You clearly have zero experience with the actual development of the State exam. Both of these individuals speak from ACTUAL experience. As Edward and RAM have stated, get involved and learn what really happens instead of making wildly inaccurate statements on a public forum that really just expose your complete ignorance.

In the past, citing a reference to support an answer could have made a difference for some answers where there existed several possible correct answers to a particular question. If the cite served to clarify or support an answer, it was helpful. If it seemed to be extraneous info, or it the answer given was not clear enough to have the grading team at least consider the answer as possibly being correct, the cite had little or no value.

Unless the question specifically asked for a cite, a cite to a reference on its own was not acceptable, as explained in the exam instructions given to each examinee in the old format.

The level of knowledge/expertise required to pass the exam, or the minimum level of competency to which the exam is developed does not and has never had anything to do with the level of knowledge that the exam administration company employees may have had about surveying. The idea that it is or was is patently ridiculous.

In the days pre-Prometric, the exam admin contract employees input was limited to guiding the surveyors who actually developed the questions and answers in the wording of the questions so that the question as phrased clearly asked for the knowledge sought to be tested, and in leading the surveyors through the excersise to evaluate the content of th equestions asked to ensure that the mix of knowledge tested substantially adhered to the test content plan (the last plan was developed in 2011 and published by BPELSG - Input was sought from practicing licensees by BPELSG via this forum and other means - response from practicing surveyors was adequate, not great). The exam admin contract employees had no input as to the technical content of the questions.

The minimum level of competence to be tested for had alwaysa been arrived at by the surveyors on the exam development team and further refined by the surveyors on the standards setting team.

In my opinion, there was pressure to arrive at a standard that resulted in a pass rate within an "acceptable" range, but traced to its source, that pressure originated from the whiners who perrenially failed the exam because they wouldn't identify their weak areas and refine their studies accordingly.

I don't like the idea of a closed book exam and respectfully disagree with RAM on this point that a closed book exam tests the individual rather than the references. The exam is still developed by surveyors who use those references to check their practice against well recognized, published sources. So the individuals knowledge is judged by the standard of those sources. The reference library that BPELSG makes available to the exam development team (and to the grading and appeals teams under the old format), although somewhat outdated w.r.t. many titles, amounts to several thousand pages of reference material that the exam development team has at their disposal to write the exam.

And yet we are going to expect the unlicensed examinees to answer questions without being able to check references, that were developed by licensees who had benefit of checking those references as they wrote the questions.

One of the metrics that is tested in an open book exam is the examinees ability to quickly find reference material on point. It was generally not measured by any one question or set of questions, but was reflected in one's overall score. The ability to properly and efficiently use reference materials is an important skill for the professional. It is somewhat less important for the skilled technician.

Likewise, an exam format that requires the examinee to answer with complete sentences and perhaps even 1 or more paragraphs (haven't seen that in a while) tests an examinees ability to communicate effectively in writing, another essential skill for the professional, but perhaps less so for the skilled technician.

A closed book, all multiple guess format cannot test either of those essential professional skills.

So with the closed book exam, will we now be expecting the examinees to commit to memory enough knowledge across the breadth of survey practice to be minimally competent even in areas in which they have rarely or never worked and may never intend to work in? How many licensed surveyors could meet that standard? How many on the exam development teams could meet it?

Will the questions be adjusted to a less stringent level of knowledge required to answer correctly to make up for the inability to check references? Is that really what we want to do as a profession - lower the standard of what constitutes "minimally competent?"

Or, possibly worse, will the pressure that has been applied to arrive at a pass rate in the "acceptable" range be applied to the point where instead of cut scores hovering around 50%, we begin to see them well down into the 40s?

I know, as all professionals should, which areas of practice I am fully competent in and which I am less than fully competent in. If I find myself treading the edges of areas that my knowledge is hovering around that minimal competence level, in practice, I won't provide answers without checking them.

On an exam, if my level of competence is hovering at the "just not competent" level, should score at just below the cut score when answering on just what's in, and accessible within my memory. But in a multiple guess format, the examinee is given 5 possible answers.

Well, given the a list of possible solutions, even if one or more is a logical distracter, I can guess correctly more often than not. If at the "just not competent" level in a particular area of practice, I could almost certainly guess my way to enough points to pass that portion at the 50% cutoff level.

If someone is "just not competent" pretty much across the board, they would probably be able to guess their way into a license more often that not.

The problem is that in practice, we are presented with problems and must discover the answers after we properly identify the questions. No client has ever brought me a project and supplied me with a list of possible outcomes to choose from. That is the major flaw with an all-multiple guess format.

What are we testing for? Are we licensing at a professional level or a technical one? We tell the public and other professions that we are "professionals" by virtue of our licence, but is that actually true? Will it continue to be true? I'm not very optimistic with respect to licensing at this point in time.

There are a lot of excellent professionals in our ranks - those who continually strive to add to their base of knowledge. But ever decreasingly is having a license an accurate measure of whether or not one is a professional surveyor.


I guess I went off on a tangent here. Back on point: Closed book, not good.

Thank you Evan. My points too, but probably worded a little less PC.

One point you make is a candidate that failed to increase his knowledge in his weak areas. Since this test is now a national secret it is not as easy for candidates to do this. It is my understanding that the letter sent to those failing the exam is extremely vague and pretty much a waste of the 45 cent stamp.

land butcher wrote:Thank you Evan. My points too, but probably worded a little less PC.

One point you make is a candidate that failed to increase his knowledge in his weak areas. Since this test is now a national secret it is not as easy for candidates to do this. It is my understanding that the letter sent to those failing the exam is extremely vague and pretty much a waste of the 45 cent stamp.

It is. It tells you nothing.

As someone who is studying for the tests, the closed book part of this is making it harder that I think it needs to be and no, I've never taken the exams before, this is my first go around with it.


They have supplied the 'reference material' I use quotes, because IMHO other than the vertical/horizontal curve tables and maybe a few others, it seems pretty useless to a surveyor.

Are they really going to be testing us on something where we have to know the weight of a gallon of water? or a cubic foot of water? and 3 pages of distribution tables?? I've been surveying for nearly 12 years.... and can't think of one time I've had to know that to solve a boundary issue.

One of the things that makes it hard also, is that the state is open book, but since the national is not, I need to memorize fully all of the photogrammetry formulas, which, yeah, maybe I should know, but, with everything else I've got to know, being able to look in one place for all of them and more importantly being able to use them properly is IMHO much more important to qualify as a competent surveyor.

I assume they will test some on the public lands system, so now I will have to memorize ALL of that, which very few of us work with on a daily basis.

Heck, maybe I'll have a better chance at the state test because of this, I don't know, since I know must be able to remember all of the national standards of accuracy for leveling, photogrammetry and closures for first through 4 order accuracies, it'll be less I have to look up on the state exam and give me more time to review my state plane coordinate calc's....

They didn't update the sample questions of the reference materials list when they went from open book to closed book.... well, they added the ALTA standards to the ref materials only. So, one can assume, that they will now be giving nearly the exact same difficult test this year.

Yes, there are certain things that every surveyor should 'know' and not have to look up. I get that and agree with it. But, knowing where to find a principal or an equation for a field as diverse as our is, is also important. If I had to look up the answer to each of the 100 question on the national test, I'd never be able to finish.

Mental meltdown rant over, back to memorizing formulas and stuff.

The reason there may be hydraulic info in the review materials is that, as a national exam, it covers materials that may be pertinent to LS practice in all the different states, not necessarily just those aspects of practice that is common to all of the states.

Practice laws vary considerably. Some states limit the definition of the practrice of surveying to boundary and topo. Some include design for site grading, minor roads, pipes and gravity flow enclosed (pipe) & open channel systems (canals & ditches), minor retaining walls, etc.

I would not be surprised if there were a question or two in any of those areas, but would be surprised if there are more than a question or two.

If a significant portion of your practice is going to include construction staking, although our license does not include design authority, good practice would be that you are able to check the validity of much of the basic design elements of what you will be staking so that you can bring design errors to the engineer's attention before you stake them.

I don't know how much the national LS exam has changed in 18 years, but if there were such questions (and there probably were) on the exam I took, they weren't of such complexity or amount as to cause me any alarm.

I also don't know if BPELSG takes it into consideration if there are engineering design questions on the NCEES exam to adjust the cut score at all. Most likely they don't, but if you're concerned, ask them.

Also as I recall, the handout materials provided when you take the exam include many of the formulae including those for photogrammetry (fly height, focal length, etc.) and even some very basic trig and curve formulae that I would have thought an LS level surveyor would have had committed to memory.

I wouldn't sweat either of these content concerns at all. Look around to all those that you've met who have passed in recent years. Do you consider your level of intelligence to be basically in line with those people? Do you think that your level of preparation is about what they had?

If you answered yes to both, you are probably fine. Just spend a couple more weeks reviewing those areas of survey principles (since way more of the exam will be these and very little will be design related), and then let your brain rest for a couple days prior to the exam.

Thanks Evan.

It was just a rough day.

Your explaination makes sense yes, i should know many of these formulas..... just a little stressed as the test approaches ya know?

The thought of forgetting y=ax^2 or something else i h
Should know during the test and having a memory dump is just my worry. Just like the nightmare of showing up to your first day of work and forgetting to put pants on. Lol

Shaun,

Having taken and passing the state test a few years ago, I can say that I barely touched my references. The only one that I would miss now would be the "Definitions of surveying and related terms" that Land Butcher mentioned above. Just keep studying and remember all the lectures we had with Turner and Neto, you'll be fine.

Dave