New CAE exam dirt and analysis

Continuing from yesterday's post...

My teammate said she didn't feel good about the exam, and didn't think there was anything else she could have done to have passed. I remember feeling the same way.

Now that the recommended reading has been expanded under the new 10 domain content outline, her comments about the breadth of the new exam's material lead me to a relatively obvious conclusion. It would seem you can't just read the three books that ASAE formerly recommended under the old 5 domain content outline and expect to have an easy time with the new CAE exam.

From this conversation (and Anon's comments from yesterday), it appears that the CAE commission defied my expectations -- and those of many others. The prevailing opinion was that the CAE commission wouldn't be able to write enough questions based on the new content outline, in the ten months between the announcement of the new content outline and last Friday's test, to significantly alter the content of the exam, compared to the one administered in December 2004. That now appears to have been an underestimation of the commission's capabilities, and those of ASAE's credentialing staff.

However, I understand that the commission evaluates questions in live exams continuously. Therefore, many of the questions on the test I took back in December 2004, that seemed to have come from outside the 5 domain content outline, could have actually been evaluation questions that were being tested for the new 10 domain CAE exam. It's possible, I suppose, that exam questions based on the new content outline had been popping up in CAE exams for years, as the new content outline was being written.

The overall pass rate will indicate if the new exam is harder than the old one. I think it will also demonstrate whether or not the new CAE authoritative literature is not just recommended reading, but required reading.