BOARD EXAM TIP: Important References

Review materials are very important in preparing for the board exam. The good news is there’s a lot of available ME review materials for you. The bad news is, they are too many and reviewing all of them will take forever. The key is to have a good selection among those materials. Here are some of my recommended review materials.

PAST BOARD QUESTIONS
For me, this is the top priority or the most “must have” material of all. It gives you a hint on what the board exam looks like. You can study the questions given and use this information to optimize your review. For example, have you noticed the frequency of “elements” or “terminology” question compared to computation? Yes “terms” comprises of roughly 70% of board exam questions. Use this information to adjust your review. Don’t just focus on computations.

Another thing you could notice is that the computations are fairly simple. What does this tell you? Simple, don’t focus your time to computational problem questions whose solution takes two page of paper. Focus on simple ones. I’m not saying that you must not learn how to solve difficult, long solution computations; I said FOCUS or put PRIORITY to simple ones because they have the greatest chance of appearing in the actual board.

It’s now up to you to take note of what you can see from the line of questioning in the board exam. The point I’m trying to make is to prioritize having a copy of board exam questions. There are books that put these at the end portion.

RED BOOK
I can’t anymore remember the title of that book but it was published by an owner of an engineering review center. Anyway, the rest of the book is not that important, except the potion that contains terminologies on engineering economy. Terms such as bonds, asset, t-bills, etc have made frequent appearance on the board exam. It’s worth to study these. Anyway, many books are already publishing these terminologies so don’t be curious anymore with the “red book”. Actually I call it “red book” because its early edition has a red cover.

BLUE BOOK

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Again, I don’t remember the name of this book but it is a reviewer for Marine Engineers. It contains questions about boilers, oilers, and other mechanical equipments in the ship. Some review centers gives a photocopy of the “question and answer” portion of the book to their students. It’s a good reference and some questions from this book already appeared on the previous board.

PME CODE (PSME CODE)

The Philippine Mechanical Code is a very important reference not only for “actual work” but also for the ME board exam. It contains standards based on ASME, ISO and other international standards but specifically applied to the Philippine setting. Some of these standards have already been asked in the previous board exams.

DON’T FORGET YOUR TEXT BOOKS
Lastly, don’t forget your text books such as Machine Design Bokks by Faires, Daughty and Valiance. These are references used by Mechanical Engineers until now and proven themselves already in the past board exams.
Note: I do not advice to study the Machinery’s Handbook. It’s too long and will not be practical to focus at. But if you have sometime you can take a look at it. It’s quite of a good reference.

DISCLAMER
What I wrote above is just a piece of ADVICE and mere SUGGESTIONS based on my personal experience and of other successful passers. Also, having these references, by itself, is NOT a GUARANTEE that you will pass the exam. Again, from the previous tips, DILIGENCE and DISCIPLINE plays the greatest factor and both of them depend on YOU.