5 Reasons Why PRC ECE Examiners Failed the Board Exam

ECE National Passing Percentage Trend for the Last 3 Years

Are you a first time examiner or this is your second take? If this is your second time, you already have an idea what is ECE or Electronics Engineer Board Exam all about.

What is difference in getting 69% and 70% in Board Exam? Definitely it is FAILED-PASS situation and no one like 69% right?


5 Common Reasons Why Examiners Failed the ECE/Electronics Engineer Board Exam

1. Unpreparedness - They don't give enough time to review all subjects. Board exam schedule are usually given during April and October of the year. If you graduate March or April, you will have 4-5 months reviewing for October exam.

If you graduate October, you will also have 4-5 months reviewing for April board exam. If you want to top the board exam or give yourself a longer time for review, don't take the exam right away. With 8-10 months, I think you will have an edge with other examiners.

2. Unfamiliarity - ECE or Electronics Engineer board exam is a multiple choice questions in a limited time. When I'm reviewing for board exam, the questions in my mind are,

a. what are the types of questions given?
b. what are the common questions or is there a trends?
c. what subjects am I going to review?
d. Do I have to review all subjects covering ECE?

To become familiar, you can enroll at review center or ask your friends who already took the board exam. You can also make a research by yourself or search for review guides in the internet.

3. One Subject are Taken for Granted - ECE board exam before are 3 subjects, today with addition of one subject they should be given with enough time to review. If you excel in Math, I think that's an edge and you can give more time in Electronics or other subjects.

More important is you don't get below 50% score/grade in any subject. Don't review too much exhausting all your time in 3 subjects and one subject taken for granted.

4. Intelligent Guessing - With 4-5 months to review, honestly you can't review all topics of 4 subjects (Math, GEAS, Electronics, ESAT/Communication). Communication is a very broad subject and you can't memorize  all formulas, concepts and principles so what should you do?

One disadvantage of multiple choice questions are the probability of getting a correct answer, that's 25% for 4 choices and an intelligent guess would increase to 50% chance and that's really a good news because even you don’t' have knowledge about the topic or subject, you can get a points.

In opposite effect, an examiner with knowledge about the topic or subject don't get a credit or points because he/she pick the wrong answer unlike with essay where you should explain your point of view and discuss about what you know and some credit is given to you.

So, intelligent guessing is a pitfall. Do you know what is probability of getting a 70 correct answers for guessing a 100 questions?

5. Time and Forgetting - It's advantageous to give more review time like 8-10 months compare to 4-5 months but when we are reviewing, a new information is learned and forgetting start's to take effect. Forgetting is decay of information due to lack of use and interference due to new information.

Information stored in our long term memory are never completely lost but they are difficult to retrieved. That's the reason why sometimes we know about the answer to the questions but we can't say or recall it and it will consume time during board exam.

ECE/Electronics Engineer board exam is time limited as I said and if recalling information takes time, that will accumulate until we run out of time. For Electronics subject, 100 questions are given for 4 hours to answer them completely. That would translate to 2.4 minutes per question.

I hope you prepare, become familiar with types of question given, don't take for granted 1 subject, don’t make a guess in choosing answer as much as possible and give enough time and surely you will pass the board exam.

Goodluck!

Source:
PRC ECE/Electronics Engineer Exam Result April 2012



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