Freaking out about PAT

[fayevalentine]

TFE just does not click for me. I'm okay with the other sections but this is seriously the bane of my existence. Does anyone have any advice?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[FutureDDS_11]

How long have you been doing TFE? Have you done one of the BC PAT #6-10? I was on the same boat with TFE, but after doing the first two the Ari says to do (#6 and #7) and going over every single problem (even the ones I got right), it helped me a lot. I know a lot of people say this and it might not really make sense, but for TFE, if you practice efficiently, it will "click" for you and it will be much simpler. Know why you got each question right or wrong.

When I do the generators, even when I narrow down to one choice which I am certain is the correct answer, I still look at all the other details for the pieces from all three angles to help myself practice visualizing the structure with TFE.

Most importantly, before anything if you have not yet, check out Ari's top-front-end-tutorial on Bootcamp, it helps a lot.

 

[okiedokeartichoke]

Same here. I was actually awesome at TFE when I was doing the generators, but boy was I surprised to see how different TFE really was on the actual BC PAT exams. I took my first PAT exam yesterday and did so poorly in that section. On the other hand, I did poorly on pattern folding using the generators, but I did really great on them in the BC PAT exam. Cases were flipped.

The generators were pretty misleading to me for those sections.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Same here. I was actually awesome at TFE when I was doing the generators, but boy was I surprised to see how different TFE really was on the actual BC PAT exams. I took my first PAT exam yesterday and did so poorly in that section. On the other hand, I did poorly on pattern folding using the generators, but I did really great on them in the BC PAT exam. Cases were flipped.

The generators were pretty misleading to me for those sections.

Agreed! The tfe generators have the potential to be difficult, but 90% of the time the answers are set up where it is painfully obvious most are wrong and there's just one that fits any form of the object shown at all. Still healthy practice though!

 

[fayevalentine]

How long have you been doing TFE? Have you done one of the BC PAT #6-10? I was on the same boat with TFE, but after doing the first two the Ari says to do (#6 and #7) and going over every single problem (even the ones I got right), it helped me a lot.

Aha, I must have missed that advice! I did test #1 and did poorly. I will try #6 and 7 today and tomorrow.

Most importantly, before anything if you have not yet, check out Ari's top-front-end-tutorial on Bootcamp, it helps a lot.

Thank you! I will try this advice and visualizing all 3 incorrect answers as well . I truly appreciate your help!

 

[JLT223]

Save it for last and skip around, doing your better sections first. To be honest I was so fed up with it I actually guessed on most TFE problems on my exam. I don't really recommend that but if you spend time and kill the other sections you'll most likely be fine.

 

[fayevalentine]

Save it for last and skip around, doing your better sections first. To be honest I was so fed up with it I actually guessed on most TFE problems on my exam. I don't really recommend that but if you spend time and kill the other sections you'll most likely be fine.

Is it fairly easy to navigate on the actual DAT? I know I have to select skip for each TFE question, but do I actually have to mark them in order to review them later? Thanks for the advice!

 

[Roy Williams]

Here is a walkthrough that I posted yesterday. It worked well for me. Hopefully it helps and let me know if you have any questions:

Alright so this is the problem from Bootcamp that I chose:

You'll notice right away that the line counting method won't get you the final answer. Sure, sometimes it can help you eliminate an answer or two, but I found in the long run, it was just a waste of time because you weren't guaranteed anything. A lot of people say to try and visualize the 3-d object, but I found that was a little difficult sometimes. If you can do it, it helps a ton. If not, It's best to try and eliminate answer choices based on seeing what types of lines should be where.

So the first thing I do is try to find something that is very distinct and easy to find. So I look at the the front view and see the right angle on the right side. From the end view, this right angle will form a solid line because we can directly see where shape changes. So then we go to look at the answer and try to find that solid line. Every answer choice has that solid line right there, so we are unable to eliminate any answers.

Now I just move my eyes down a bit from that right angle on the front view and see that little indention. Because we can see the indention from looking on from the end view, we know that the closest line up from the bottom will be solid. This shows us that we can eliminate Answer Choice A.

Now I move up to that circle we can see on the front view image. If we find where that circle is supposed to be on the top view, we'll notice that it forms a cylinder shaped whole through the entire object (this is important because in some problems you'll see something like this that will only go halfway through or something. From the end view, we can't actually see that cylinder shaped hole through the object, so it will have to be a dashed line. But how many? The circle doesn't form any angles like a triangle would, so we should see a dashed line representing the bottom edge of the circle as well as the top edge of the circle. If we look at our remaining answer choices B, C, and D, we'll see that D is the only that has these two dashed lines, and therefore, D is the Correct Answer.

Notice we didn't even have to deal with any of that top part of the image from the end view. Speed is key in this section of the test, so instead of trying to find an image that will fit everything you see, I think it's best to just find ways you can eliminate other answers and decide on an answer choice from there.

 

[JLT223]

Is it fairly easy to navigate on the actual DAT? I know I have to select skip for each TFE question, but do I actually have to mark them in order to review them later? Thanks for the advice!

It's not a big deal. You just have to remember that you skipped them and will need to return to them. At the end of the section it will show you that there are 15 "unanswered" questions. Skipping through the 15 TFE only takes like 20 seconds maximum if you spam click.

 

[fayevalentine]

Here is a walkthrough that I posted yesterday. It worked well for me. Hopefully it helps and let me know if you have any questions:

Alright so this is the problem from Bootcamp that I chose:

You'll notice right away that the line counting method won't get you the final answer. Sure, sometimes it can help you eliminate an answer or two, but I found in the long run, it was just a waste of time because you weren't guaranteed anything. A lot of people say to try and visualize the 3-d object, but I found that was a little difficult sometimes. If you can do it, it helps a ton. If not, It's best to try and eliminate answer choices based on seeing what types of lines should be where.

So the first thing I do is try to find something that is very distinct and easy to find. So I look at the the front view and see the right angle on the right side. From the end view, this right angle will form a solid line because we can directly see where shape changes. So then we go to look at the answer and try to find that solid line. Every answer choice has that solid line right there, so we are unable to eliminate any answers.

Now I just move my eyes down a bit from that right angle on the front view and see that little indention. Because we can see the indention from looking on from the end view, we know that the closest line up from the bottom will be solid. This shows us that we can eliminate Answer Choice A.

Now I move up to that circle we can see on the front view image. If we find where that circle is supposed to be on the top view, we'll notice that it forms a cylinder shaped whole through the entire object (this is important because in some problems you'll see something like this that will only go halfway through or something. From the end view, we can't actually see that cylinder shaped hole through the object, so it will have to be a dashed line. But how many? The circle doesn't form any angles like a triangle would, so we should see a dashed line representing the bottom edge of the circle as well as the top edge of the circle. If we look at our remaining answer choices B, C, and D, we'll see that D is the only that has these two dashed lines, and therefore, D is the Correct Answer.

Notice we didn't even have to deal with any of that top part of the image from the end view. Speed is key in this section of the test, so instead of trying to find an image that will fit everything you see, I think it's best to just find ways you can eliminate other answers and decide on an answer choice from there.

You just made this so much easier!!! Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. I'm going to go practice this method and I will report back .

 

[Roy Williams]

You just made this so much easier!!! Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart. I'm going to go practice this method and I will report back .

Sounds great!

 

[Neil Smoove]

Keep doing generators on BC