Providing this feedback with minimal changes. I added exams in parentheses for a reference.
As you can see the NMC has been reworking some of the questions. This should explain the importance of feedback from individuals and schools—Please send them in, for your counterparts and for the health of the industry.
I just took the new exams through ***********. It was rough. I went 6/7. They had a 27% pass rate and that was apparently the highest in the country. I would say 60% of the questions were new.
Here’s a breakdown for you:
Oceans (Q117)- Still the same. Got a star reduction instead of a HO correction. The best star fix question was hard- planets in half the answers that were bad and two good star groups. Still not sure why one was better than the other even considering everything. That was a tight difference between the two.
Rules (Q100)- I passed with a 96. This was the one I was most worried about walking in. There was a good range of difficulty. Some of the new questions are just old questions, but inverted. For example one question I got was something like:
What is the maximum distance that a vessel can obstruct a navigable channel before displaying lights?
A. A vessel of not less than 60 meters
B. B. A vessel of not less than 80 meters
C. A vessel of not less than 100 meters
D. A vessel must always display lights
It’s the flipped version of this question:
BOTH INTERNATIONAL AND INLAND: A barge is anchored in A navigable seaway. How many meters of navigable space must exist before a barge needs to have forward and aft all around white lights shown?
A. 60 meters
B. 80 meters
C. 100 meters
D. 120 meters
There were also some tricky ones. A lot of questions that relied on your understanding of light spacing for different sized vessels- what appears forward and what appears aft. Overall I think if you have a strong understanding of the old rules questions or rules in general you’ll pass. If you’re on the edge then it’s a no-go. It took out a good number of people but again, I thought a strong familiarity with the old questions carried me through.
There were also a few questions on where inland rules applied with US territories as wrong answers. Some were easy and announced themselves- others took a moment.
Chart Plot (Q115)- By far the hardest exam for me. The first one I took was very difficult, but very fair. I failed by one. It was a Chesapeake. I’m told it had a pass rate of about 52%. It was the first CP I’ve ever taken that relied on Dead Reckoning s for questions. It had one string of linked questions but no real tricks inside of them. The tricks were in other questions. One of the questions asked when you would meet a outbound ship.
Nav Gen: (Q114) I thought it was very fair. There were two CFR questions. Not a lot of nautical astronomy. Very generous with look-ups in Bowditch. It was cake. 86
Near Coastal (Q116)- Honestly, everything was easy except for the new tide / current questions. It had both examples of the fucked new tide / current with sine waves. You had to factor set / drift into your speed and use that for 60D in order to determine your time of arrival at a station during a desired period of current. The tide was tide over an obstruction (using a sine wave). I expected one of the two, didn’t think I’d get both. I’d assume that’s what to expect for all NC moving forward though.
Deck Gen (Q111) – Usually my strongest subject by a long shot. It was my lowest grade. Passed with a 76. A lot of CFR lookups. It was my first time really using them but I was able to find enough questions to feel confident I was going to pass. I honestly don’t know how to study for this one. It was pretty brutal. Afterwords I found out this test had a pass rate of 42%.
Deck Safety (Q112)- I was pretty nervous- DS is my weakest or second weakest subject along with CP. I ended with a 90. Like deck gen it was a lot of CFR look-ups but a good number of questions would reference the specific chapter or subsection. A lot of more obscure stuff from the signals book. Only a few formula questions and nothing difficult. Two long forms. All of the questions that I’ve struggled learning (like the string of lifeboats heading to the beach) were rewritten to be more understandable. There were two questions about life rafts that both had an answer of deflate the floor- one with helicopter operations and the other was saying cool in a tropical climate.
Chart Plot Retake (Q115)- Honestly, it was f’d. Long Island Sound. Answer choice positions were all a minute away from each other- sometimes one E/W, sometimes one minute N/S. Long tracks that spread across the entire chart. Multiple linked questions with tricky asks. I’m honestly mad about it. Visibility of lights questions with two minute spreads. For that one the answers were 3:57, 4:00, 4:03, 4:06. I got 4:01 from my math but I guess the answer was 4:03. I remember the final question was entering New Haven harbor. We had a gyro error of 335 and it asked for the error. The light list told me it was an error of 336.6. The answers were something like:
1.6 E
10.3E
10.6E
10.4E
I noticed they didn’t reference PSC or PGC in the answer selections or specify anything in the question. It turns out they wanted PSC error so I got that one wrong (I put A thinking they wanted gyro error). The chart wasn’t fair- it really didn’t measure your understanding of plotting. It was just trying to ask you vague questions and see if you could murk through to what they had in mind. Honestly it was pretty demotivating. I got 10/15. I felt I was accurate throughout but I guess I wasn’t. I’m told it was designed so that an error on an early question would impact answers several questions down the line, even if it isn’t apparent right away. We also deballasted partway through and later had to account of that change in height of eye and then on a different question draft. A lot of tricks.
The other thing to know is that the coast pilot’s lookups on this test were NOT verbatim. That makes it significantly harder as well. I don’t know of any CPs like that. The retake was about 16 of us and three made it through. I was not one of them.
Overall, I’d say 60% of the questions I saw were new. Of those a good number were rephrased, common sense, or were guessable. 10-15 percent left me scratching my head. Some of them were kinda ridiculous but I mostly made it through.
I have one more attempt at Chart Plot. I haven’t failed any of the Lapware plots in a long time, but I was worried about CP going in. My plan is to just do 3 or 4 plots a day for the next week and a half and then go back. I have until January 22nd to pass. I was wondering if you think the masters level charts would help with the new 3m plotting questions. The 3m plots on lapware are not anywhere near the difficulty of the plots I saw. I plan on running through the old sample exams that I’ve managed to get my hands on but there are only so many. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Both of the Chart Plots had the same format where they started with a running fix. The next plotting question was a fix where two lights were in line (You were between the two) and you get a range to one of them for your position. That went into a set and drift that leaves you a certain distance off another light.
Anyways, that’s my experience. I was told to expect more exams like the ones I saw for the next several months. Apparently, a lot of exams have been released into the RECs without the normal sample size due to the government shutdowns. I was told this probably won’t change or settle down for several months.
NOTE: LAPWARE only uses tests and content released by the USCG for our question bank. In this case, they’ve updated their question bank and haven’t released representative content to the public.
