Need Suggestions please for Oct 2017

i just got my results and I failed. I scored a 23 in the morning session and 27 in the afternoon session. I took school of PE class and not sure how much it really helped in preparing for structures and soil mechanics. Having said, what do you all think about EET class for both morning and afternoon sessions for civil transportation? Any suggestions or advise will help very much.

Maybe a class just isn't the way to go? Depends on the type of learner you are. I know it's not for me. I suck at listening. Lectures in class never did anything for me in school. For final exam preps I never went to any test reviews, because my time was much better spent on my own working hard at example problems. That being said my wife is opposite, and thrives in a classroom environment. 

I just did tons of example problems/exams using the CERM. I got to be super comfortable with that book. I might not know everything in it, but I can't find out anything really quickly in it. Also doing example problems over and over gave me a sense of not answering the question too quickly, but being careful to consider any "tricks" or "exceptions".

What was your depth cal91, construction doesn't have much out there for quality example problems geared toward the exam.

Since i did really bad in structures, soil mechanics and some materials, i definitely want to take a class for AM just to help with a head start. I am looking to take an on-demand class and not actual live class. 

Structural. Good point, that could be part of it too. For the AM, there's plenty of example problems.

He's in transportation, however. From what I heard it was a heard that was a lot of looking up information in the right books. For those problems especially I always make sure there's no footnotes or alternate tables that should be used instead, or information in the surrounding text that would give a different answer than what first meets the eye.

That is correct. Transportation in the afternoon had a look up type problems. Not too hard to find some of those answers if you are familiar with the reference books. However my issue has been the morning session...Hope EET can help with the AM session. 

I felt that School of PE was good at preparing me for the Civil morning topics, except that sometimes I felt they presented problems that were way too complex for the morning session. I guess it worked though, because I finished the morning session in 3 hours and had a full hour to check my work.  

DC_engineer2017 said:

i just got my results and I failed. I scored a 23 in the morning session and 27 in the afternoon session. I took school of PE class and not sure how much it really helped in preparing for structures and soil mechanics. Having said, what do you all think about EET class for both morning and afternoon sessions for civil transportation? Any suggestions or advise will help very much.

Click to expand...

Please know your feedback is welcomed! We are always working on improving our courses based on student feedback.

DC_engineer2017 said:

i just got my results and I failed. I scored a 23 in the morning session and 27 in the afternoon session. I took school of PE class and not sure how much it really helped in preparing for structures and soil mechanics. Having said, what do you all think about EET class for both morning and afternoon sessions for civil transportation? Any suggestions or advise will help very much.

Click to expand...

I too took the transportation exam. My strengths heading into the test were storm water and geometric roadway design. While the rest was familiar, I had to re-learn most of it. I signed up for a group class through ASCE that met once a week (only a handful of us). Every week we focused on one of the five areas of the test and did the 6 min solutions breath problems for that discipline and reviewed those problems together. Being able to discuss questions and bounce ideas back and forth was great. What helped me the most was trying to work through each problem and actually read that portion of the CERM to learn the material associated with it, then tabbing it and highlighting the equations used. One week prior to the test I went back through all of the breath problems we did just to touch on them again and re-read areas I still wasn't comfortable with.

For the morning portion I think I used the CERM exclusively and maybe one or two other references. Finished the morning portion with an hr to spare and it seemed like it went very well.

I thought the afternoon portion kicked my butt. A ton of lookups like you said earlier and some very abstract questions that kept me up at night for the past month.

200+ hrs, 3 months, I passed, you can too. My biggest take away from all this was know the material and concepts front, back, left, and right. And know where to find it, quickly.

Hopefully some of this helps. Keep your chin up. 

I took the School of PE course to prepare for this exam also (construction depth). I felt the breadth SoPE review was adequate though it may have lacked some on the structural items as that is what I struggled with most in the AM. I still finished with plenty of time to go back and review all of my questions again and catch some errors on where I filled in the wrong bubbles! The nice thing with SoPE is they offer a free re-take of the course. If you end up purchasing EET you should try to utilize both of them to your advantage and hit hard on the areas where you were weak. 

I purchased a review course because I needed some structure of how to study. I originally bought the CERM and the CERM practice problem book but felt that I could not adequately prepare myself without some guidance. I am also in the middle of getting my Master's Degree and really don't want to take it again...

*Disclaimer - I do not have my scores yet so I don't know if I passed, but I felt that SoPE prepared me adequately. 

For those that get a free retake, I would suggest doing it. This time around, you know what areas you struggled with so you can pay more attention in those areas and/or ask more questions about those specific topics.  Make sure you still pay attention to the other areas though, the October test will be different questions,  so it may cover a specific concept that you may not be so strong in. 

I suggest you take EET. If you want to pass, EET is the way to go

DC_engineer2017 said:

i just got my results and I failed. I scored a 23 in the morning session and 27 in the afternoon session. I took school of PE class and not sure how much it really helped in preparing for structures and soil mechanics. Having said, what do you all think about EET class for both morning and afternoon sessions for civil transportation? Any suggestions or advise will help very much.

Click to expand...

Dont waste your time with other courses. I took other courses and failled october. Took EET and was laughing while taking the morning and afternoon it was so easy. EET prepared you well. They really care about your performance. Nazrul and the other instructors are excellent. They really wish for your success. I think other review courses are just interested in $$ and give you a bunch of packets. EET really delves into the concepts you must know to excel. Thank you EET and Nazrul for helping me pass! 

I passed 8 hours on my 1st try. I took on demand EET's breadth and PM transportation. I thought EET structural portion wasn't good enough while the rest of AM subjects were excellent. I felt April 2017 exam morning doesn't represent EET breadth directly. However, EET pm transportation was spot on. Samir was an excellent teacher. His binder covers 70% to 80% of the exam. The rest were just look up from reference books. I felt more confident in pm portion than am. I used EET 2 binders, CERM and neces old and new practice exams. Don't give up. More than half of my coworkers failed the 8 hours this term. Study hard on your weak subjects and good luck!

I did the MGI Civil PE Review..... Mostly because I really procrastinated on studying and it was a way to go at my own pace and catch up (Didnt really start studying until 6 weeks before, threw every free minute I had into studying and somehow pulled it off). They have a pass or your money back guarantee, too. http://pereviewcourse.com/mgi-civil-pe-review/

Midnight Overlord said:

I did the MGI Civil PE Review..... Mostly because I really procrastinated on studying and it was a way to go at my own pace and catch up (Didnt really start studying until 6 weeks before, threw every free minute I had into studying and somehow pulled it off). They have a pass or your money back guarantee, too. http://pereviewcourse.com/mgi-civil-pe-review/

Click to expand...

How was your interaction with instructor? Could you discuss methods and approach or was it solely the solution to the problem? Are the exams challenging? 

I took the Testmasters course. Their morning section prep was fantastic, especially the structural. I found their afternoon prep for transpo to be a bit lacking, but maybe that's because there were so many "look up this random factoid in the manual" questions. Still, there were a couple of problems that I hadn't seen at all during my studying, and that was frustrating.

I don't know if School of PE offers the free retake if you didn't pass, but you should look into it.

Hemi79 said:

How was your interaction with instructor? Could you discuss methods and approach or was it solely the solution to the problem? Are the exams challenging? 

Click to expand...

To be clear I took the Civil-Transportation exam.

The way the program worked was that I received three bound sets of review material. Each binder was split up into the different civil disciplines. There was a bound notebook of review material, and then review questions on the discipline. The second bound notebook was the solutions to the review questions worked out that referenced the material it got the correct equation/table from. The review material had a lot of useful tables/equations beforehand, I even brought it into my PE exam (not all states let you do this though). The last binder was full of mini tests on each section that you would take and time yourself, and had the option to turn it in to the instructor for review/help. 

They gave two different study paths. The first was to do all practice problems and mini tests. The second was a fast track and they had suggestions on which sample problems and mini test problems to complete. Since I was in a time crunch, I did the latter. I believe the pass guarantee depends on you turning in all mini tests with a certain score.

I would recommend this option for anyone who doesn't have the time or money for a review class. If you are self motivated and learn best by doing, I would recommend it. I believe it will run you about $500 or so? So cheaper than other online classes I could find, and it gave me a great foundation.

They problems were much more challenging than the NCEES practice exam and the actual PE - but they provided a good foundation to be able to jump into the problems. Through working through harder problems, I was able to pick up the concepts I had forgotten in undergrad. I had first started out trying to go through the NCEES practice problems, and was pretty intimidated at first. I felt much more confident after going through the MGI material. 

If I had more time, I would have probably went through all the mini tests. I think I would have been in better shape and more confident if I had done so. 

Good luck! Give yourself plenty of time to study.