Is there any way that this can be updated to the 21st century? I see new questions coming out specifically the whale strike questions, but hows about removing the old obsolete questions?
I shit you not on my 1600 ton mate exam I saw a question on the breeches buoy. Really? Having been enlisted in the US Coast Guard for 8 years. I never saw or heard about these being in the inventory. Without giving my age we still had wooden boats, lead lines and sextants back then. When I googled it, the last breeches buoy rescue was in 1931.
I would agree there are very archaic or just flat out terrible questions. But we all had to jump through the same hoop…the guys at lapware actually found 4 questions that had wrong answers and submitted new questions to the USCG to replace them with…4 years later lapware said they came across the exact same wrong questions. Its really not worth the fight IMO because they won’t change. But I am 100% in agreement that there are some terrible questions in the databank.
So, are you giving me MD residency argrument? If I had to do it so should everyone else.
I would like to help fix this problem for future generations of mariners, not relish in subjecting them to it. New mariners have enough to deal with, they shouldnt have to memorize the answers to obsolete questions.
There has to be some coast guard officer with this question bank on their desk. It would only take a little bit of effort on their part.
I would love for there to be a way to do this, I encourage you. I am not giving an md argument, I am simply being realistic. BTW, MD residency is a good thing, its hands on training - way different than classroom testing. USCG testing, in my opinion, is very flawed.
“There has to be some coast guard officer with this question bank on their desk. It would only take a little bit of effort on their part.”
I’m not 100% sure of this but I think the CG has a new test bank & the old one will be discarded in 2019. Until then, mariners are given a choice of which bank they want to be tested from. So maybe there’s no need for you to be Captain “save new mariners from silly question” Guy?
Maybe @jdcavo could clarify but I am under the impression that the new testing databank is basically the old testing databank plus about 10% new questions and some removals. So I wouldn’t expect there to be much a difference/passage rate just because of a new databank. My understanding, it’s pretty much the same, but Mr Cavo knows a hell of alot more about than I do.
Probably a rewrite of the bulk of the questions and shuffling the deck of answers with new distractors with 10% is more feasible. Rewriting the entire question bank would be an arduous project even with the lead time.