Recent reviews of SE prep courses

I took School of PE for the PE exam and I felt very prepared. However, the structures lessons were weak so I'm concerned they may not be the best option for the SE. On the other hand, I go to a fair amount of Tim Mays courses for continuing ed (one of the Kaplan instructors) and really get a lot out of them, but the class time is so much less time. For example 1 hr masonry with Kaplan vs 6-7 hours with School of PE.

Anyone have a recent experience to share?

Passed the SE without taking a review class so, unfortunately, I have nothing to offer.

My company will reimburse for a review class (if you pass), so I took School of PE for SE Lateral last fall and am currently enrolled in the SE Vertical classes (decided to only take one component at a time). I passed Lateral-Bridges on the first try, so I will say that it was a worthwhile investment. It definitely helped structure my review. A few thoughts:

1. The class runs M-TH 7-10PM EST for 5 weeks straight (60 hours). As a working professional this is very intensive and left little time to do practice problems during the week, however one of the benefits of splitting up the exam is that I had my weekends to do problems (the other course component runs all day on Saturday). I also took advantage of their "on demand" option and started watching recorded sessions about a month before the class began, so it made digesting the material a little easier.

2. The course ends 2 weeks before the exam, which I felt was plenty of time to tackle the two practice tests (PPi and NCEES) and identify any remaining weaknesses. I also did a bunch of the PPi Six Minute and Structural Engineering Solved problems.

3. I felt the best part of the course is that you end up with a binder full of notes and solved example problems, which I referenced several times during the actual exam, and you should end up feeling comfortable with all the specifications. Not all the material was completely relevant, as a bridge guy I dozed off during the detailed depth reviews of NDS, ACI, AISC, and masonry, but each class starts off with general review of each specification and was more than sufficient to handle the morning multiple choice problems as I felt confident I could quickly look up the relevant code section(s). I thought their bridge depth review was very good, so I would imagine the building depth reviews would be similar. They also cover very, very basic stuff too (RC beam design, elementary statics, dead load computations, etc) that was not an effective use of my time.

4. Also helped that I had some more "skin in the game". The exam is already tough enough on the wallet with all the references and review materials you need to buy, and knowing that if I failed I'd be out the course fee gave me a little extra motivation. They offer a free retake of the class if you attend all the sessions, so there was a little bit of a safety net.

Hope this helps!

I took School of PE for lateral in the fall and passed. It was my third attempt. For me the class was necessary because I had failed twice and needed to change a variable to stay motivated. The class is intensive, but it should be. I've seen the other classes with significantly fewer hours and I'm skeptical how effective they are. We had some technology issues from time to time but SoPE was very responsive to fix the problems. The instructors were mostly good but varied in effectiveness. One was excellent, one was pretty good, the other was okay. I think that's probably as good as you'd get anywhere. Overall it definitely helped me pass, no doubt there. My only other comment is that it is a review course, not a learn-for-the-first-time course. If you try to use it as initial instruction it'll be too fast and you'll burn out. Which probably means you're not ready to begin with. Overall worth it.

Thanks for the responses! You confirmed my thoughts. School of PE it is.