Surveying: SOPE or Dr Mansour's Course?

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PE_CE_CA

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Hi All,
Appreciate any feedback you can give about why one course is better than the other. I heard Dr Mansour's content is good for the exam, but the presentation and quality of the illustrations not so good.. I haven't heard anything about School of PE's surveying course.

TIA
 
Hi All,
Appreciate any feedback you can give about why one course is better than the other. I heard Dr Mansour's content is good for the exam, but the presentation and quality of the illustrations not so good.. I haven't heard anything about School of PE's surveying course.

TIA
I’m not sure about either ( I can say Dr. Mansour’s problem examples are good as I briefly checked them out) but I went with CPESR course and Reza’s book and I highly recommend both.
So at first I went through cpesr course videos along with examples. Then I did two of the tests as I was seeing lack of enough examples during the course( just my personal opinion). Cpesr has like 8 comprehensive tests but I just solved 2 after finishing the course to just have better understanding and having good feeling. Then I went to Reza’s book and just solved practice problems of end of chapters and quizes he had at the end of the book. The problems are a little bit harder than exam but really really great and IMO helped me a lot for the exam. The only thing I tried to do during solving them is to use kirk’s ( cpesr) book as reference for finding formulas or whatever. After getting those additional practice problems done, I went back to cpesr and did the rest of exams( 6 tests) and after they were done with the review, I did the one test Reza’s book had.

So In my opinion these two alongside will be sufficient and I had really good feeling and was really confident in exam and passed it with no experience in surveying. I can say even though cpesr is amazing course but reza’s example is a need to ensure you solved enough examples to get to speed and meanwhile the more example with different thought you solve, the more ready you will be for exam

Good luck
 
@Medal90 Thanks a ton for sharing your insights!

Your approach sounds pretty solid, and I appreciate the recommendation for CPESR and Reza's book. I'll definitely look into those as well.

I'll keep your advice in mind as I prepare. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts, and here's to acing that exam!
 
@Medal90 Thanks a ton for sharing your insights!

Your approach sounds pretty solid, and I appreciate the recommendation for CPESR and Reza's book. I'll definitely look into those as well.

I'll keep your advice in mind as I prepare. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts, and here's to acing that exam!
No problem at all. For someone like me, survey was a nightmare as I never dealt with survey and the only time I did survey was a course back to school.
I passed seismic easily without even studying much at all as it is part of my daily life but survey was different case

Anyways, let me know if I can be of any help. Don’t forget for calculator TI-89 is huge game changer. I use ti-36 in my daily routine but on the very first video of cpesr, he mentioned it is good to have this one. I thought it is just some preference. Very first question I solved with my ti-36, I was running yo buy the other one.lol.
I bought one used really cheap on Facebook marketplace and during the practice and exam I was so thankful of my decision. It is just faster and for angle questions it is huge improvement than regular calculator( it does Degree, minute and seconds easier)

Good luck with your exam and feel free to reach out to me if I can be of any help
 
Thanks @Medal90 . I'm on the fence for the calculator type though, as I came to realize it is quicker converting to/from Degree, minute and seconds using Casio fx115. All you have to do is keep pressing the DMS button to obtain your angle and vice versa use shift DMS. On the TI-89 however, you'll have to do few maneuvers to switch modes etc.. not as straightforward, I know Kirk favors it, but I'm just not sure it is the best option. Just my $0.02.
 
Thanks @Medal90 . I'm on the fence for the calculator type though, as I came to realize it is quicker converting to/from Degree, minute and seconds using Casio fx115. All you have to do is keep pressing the DMS button to obtain your angle and vice versa use shift DMS. On the TI-89 however, you'll have to do few maneuvers to switch modes etc.. not as straightforward, I know Kirk favors it, but I'm just not sure it is the best option. Just my $0.02
Agreed. It is personal TBH. Ti-89 was great for me as I used TI-84 in college so I was fast and so comfortable.
 
I went with the TI-36X Pro. There is a new version called the TI-30X PRO Mathprint.
There were only a few DMS questions where the Casio would shine, but the TI works well for everything else. Hard to beat the TI feature that lets you pull down answers from above to use in current calculation.
 

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