When should I start studying??

[azerndt]

i don't think anybody has mentioned this yet - you said you are planning on taking the PE in 2013. If you are already approved to take the test why don't you take it in 2012 (October)? That way you can go into the test cold and see how you do - that will give you the best assessment of how well prepared you really are and how much you need to study.

Right now I am in graduate school and since I am close to being complete I would prefer to not take the exam while in school. I am also working so it would be too much.

I understand...sounds like you have a lot going on. I was just suggesting you go in completely cold - all it will cost you is a day, then you will have the experience of taking it once and the diagnostic report to tell you areas you should focus on. Best of luck in 2013!

 

[JohnHu]

I just passed the fire protection and had only 6 weeks to study. I didn't start studying until I knew the state would allow me to take it.

 

[chemicalpe]

I guess everybody's study structure is different. In my case I read the reference books and pretty much glanced at the test master's material to begin with. When the exam was close to 3 months and thats when I put in lot of time studying and doing problems, problems. i was not worried much about the time because I wanted to understand thoroughly in whatever I was working on because even if you put 400 hours or 500 hours and donot understand the technique, it's no good. I spent lot of time understanding the fundamentals and how the problem was approached and in how many ways can a single problem be solved and is it possible that the problem be given in any other way than the current form. I had lot of questions to myself when I started working on the problems but slowly as I was working on them and doing little bit of research, I was feeling more and more comfortable with the problems. Ofcourse, I even repeated the same kind of problems atleast twice just to see if I remembered what I did and see how much time I was taking to solve the same kind of problems.

I would say, sooner the better. Everybody is different and I wish you good luck whenever you take the test.

 

[GUNNERDOG]

Take the NCEES practice exam and see how you feel.

I found it was a good approximation for the difficulty and type of questions on the actual exam (chemical Oct 2011)

I only had time to study for the two weeks leading up to the exam (16-18 hours total) and ended up passing somehow.

I think my signature sums it up

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[ARbj]

Experience from studying for PE Electrical/Electronics: I started about 8 months prior to the Oct 2011 exam. During the first 6 weeks, I reviewed much of the math that I thought I'd need once I started doing problems. The math review was helpul also in terms of getting familar with integral tables, transform tables, etc. I used ENSYS quite a bit during this period. Ater that 6 week period, I did very problem I could get my hands on from the Internet, textbooks, and ENSYS (ENSYS started being less useful as I moved through the variuous topics b/c their content was not keeping pace with my progress). To sum up: review the fundamentals enugh to convince yourself you know it an then do sample problems, problems, and more problems.