3 (More) Must Know Skills to Pass the FS Exam

By NLC Support

The first must know skill:

ALTA Standards the America Land and Title Associations this is how you do an ALTA surgery, there’s something that are required on an ALTA survey and there are some things that are optional on an ALTA survey there’s also accuracy and precision stands and there are also items that your client must provide you when they do and ALTA survey. So what are those items, well first of all I’m going to let you all in on a little trick, and that is, there is a reference manual on your exam you can click the button pull up the reference manual and read it. Now not only can you read the reference manual you can hit control F for find and you can search for that reference manual. So if there’s a question that says cemeteries are located on a property you are doing an ALTA survey should you or must you locate the cemetery “control F” type in cemetery it’s in table “A” which is an optional ALTA list of items you answer the question, you can but you’re not required to, free point. The FS reference manual on the exam is a, just a gold mine for free point questions, so you got to use it but you should also read the ALTA standards well before you ever go into the exam.

The second must know skill:

Number two the United States National Map Accuracy Standards USNMAS, USNMAS memorize that. Because there is certain contour requirements both in terms of vertical and horizontal accuracy on paper maps and the examinee is going to ask you “given a map were a contours are 5 feet in between what is the requirement of vertical accuracy” and “you’ll say it’s got to be 90% of the points hard to be one half of a contour which means 90% of the points on this map must be within 2 1/2 feet.” Both on the FS and the PS exam the questions always come up about USNMAS because the examiners are obsessed with paper map standards.

The third must know skill:

Finally, Water Processes. now this is a broad category because you got the process of Avulsion, Accretion, Relicition, Erosion you have to know these four but you also havethese terms like Mean Low Water, Mean High Water, Thalweg, gosh if I could tell you how many thousands of examinees have had to answer a question about a Thalweg go online T-H-A-L-W-E-G thalweg burn that sucker into your memory because I don’t know what the likelihood of you getting that but it is but it I very high. And as they say sometimes old dogs have a hard time learning new tricks. Well NCEES does a great job at updating their exams based on current content but sometimes an old dog can’t learn new tricks. So, make sure you know about ALTA Standards, you understand the map accuracy required by the USNMAS, and finally know what a thalweg is and burn that sucker into your memory. If you got those three skills down pat then you have laid a beautiful foundation to pass your FS exam and I look forward to you commenting below when you do.