FREE HVAC PE EXAM STUDY RESOURCES!

1: How To Know When You Are Ready To Take The PE Exam

You need to follow this simple rule:

Master 80% of a subject and move onto the next.

When you know 80% of a particular subject you will have a sufficient level of knowledge that you can do well on that portion of the test and will go in there much more comfortable and confident.

How do you know when you are at 80%? Do practice problems and see where you are.

You’ll need a good group of quality practice problems. They will need to be like the ones on the test to properly gauge your level of competency.

Here is the process to follow to determine if you have achieved a sufficient mastery of the subject:  

1. Go through the material review. Work through any sample problems included in the review and don’t worry about solving it yourself. Look and see how they approach the problem and the way they come to a solution.
2. Once you have gone through the material review, take 20 practice problems and give yourself a mini test and do it the right way.  If you get about 15 or 16 out of the 20 correct, then you’re in good shape and can move on to the next subject. Getting less than that correct means you need to see where you fell short and review the material again. If you got less than 10 correct the first time, you should retest yourself on a fresh set of 20 practice problems. If you got over 10 correct but fell short of 15 or 16, study the solutions to those questions and move on if you feel comfortable about how the solutions were obtained.

The goal here is to feel comfortable enough with a subject so that you can move on to the next.

Getting to 80% competency on a subject is a great compromise between spending a sufficient time on the subject and not wasting precious time on something you know 80% when you have other subjects that are effectively at 20 or less%.

Think of it this way:  Would you rather go into the test knowing half of the subjects 90-100% and knowing the other half of the problems 30-50%?  Of course not!  You’ll stress over the half of the subjects you don’t know very well.  You’ll feel unprepared about what questions they could ask you from those subjects.  That’s no way to have confidence going into the test.

Look at your study guide and keep track of how well you are doing on each subject. When you achieve 80% competency on each subject you can spend your remaining time refining that last 20% of each subject.

You’ll be in a great position then because no matter what, you’re going into the test with 80% competency on every subject instead of near 100% competency on some subjects and less than 80% on others.

I don’t believe on focusing primarily on your better subjects and sacrificing the subjects you have trouble on. You need to be prepared for whatever they throw at you. You don’t know what the breakdown will be and what they will or won’t include. Each test will naturally vary the proportions of questions covering each subject within the test scope. Don’t shortchange yourself and gamble that they will include more of your favorable subjects on your particular test. That’s a bad bet.

The point is to go down your study plan and study each subject to get to 80% competency. Once you get to 80% on each subject, spend your remaining time improving on that 80%. You’ll go into the test much more comfortable and confident knowing that you have covered every area. There won’t be any scary unknowns.

Keep this rule in mind and it will help you know when you are ready to take the PE exam.