CA Civil PE Structural Depth

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subsandtowers

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Hi all,

I wanted to ask all you all a couple questions I have for preparation of the PE Exam - Structural Depth.

1. I am not too worried about the morning section, but I am worried about the afternoon. I wanted to get your opinion on how I should study for the afternoon depth. I have kept my notes and books from school (Geo: foundations, soils, Structural: steel, concrete, and other civil engineering books), but I wanted something that is just as helpful as the CERM is in the morning for the afternoon. What are your opinions on the Structural depth reference manual vs structural engineering reference manual? I have heard that the SDRM is pretty skimpy on details and going through the table of contents it does not look very good. On the other hand the SERM is more geared towards the SE exam. Should I get both of these? Or do you guys (and gals!) recommend something else.

2. I have surveyed the forums for a while now and people have mentioned that getting a hold of the old NCEES practice questions is a very beneficial in passing the exam. Do you know where I can get these? They don't seem to have them anywhere.

BTW, I am taking this exam in April 2015.

Thanks,

subsandtowers

 
Hey there,

  1. In addition to the CERM, I would recommend going through the Six-Minute Solutions for structural. Check out this article I wrote about how to study for the PE: http://bit.ly/PassPE
  2. For the NCEES practice exam, perhaps you are thinking about the ones in here: https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/store/category/PE (personally I haven't used them myself).
 
Hi sehq. I have been working thru the problems on the six minute solutions and I have found them to be very difficult. A couple things I noticed are many if not most problems would take much longer than 6 minutes and many have errors on code references and basic understanding of structural mechanics. The errata alone is 3 pages long. Do you feel that the level of difficulty of the six min sol is on par with the PE structural exam? Or do you just recommend going thru thr solutions until you get the understanding?

 
I don't remember seeing that many errors in my copy; I suppose it depends on the edition and print...

Anyhow, I do remember the problems being more difficult than the actual exam. And yes, I do recommend just go through the solutions to gain an understanding for the very difficult ones.

By doing more difficult problems, you'll feel a lot better during the exam :)

Oh and don't worry about the "6 minute" thing; it's just branding. Those hard questions weren't meant to be solved in under 6 minutes.

 
Thank you for the advice. I have been working thru the problems and I have learned a lot. And I will go thru them a few times as you have suggested. Thanks again.

 
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