Need help reviewing my diagnostic!

Failed twice, nearly identical results.  Project planning, means and methods, materials, and SITE DEVELOPMENT are pretty lacking for both exams.  I really need help finding materials helping me answer theory questions when it comes to those subjects.  

2nd attempt



1st attempt



Any other opinions or advice would be appreciated.  For breadth the 2nd time around I had the School of PE breadth sites, but they didn't seem to help me much for the Site Development theory questions.  Seems to be mainly consolidation theory, and erosion control stuff that does me in. 

EET review course helped me out tremendously. Their website is EETUSA.COM and the breadth binder had material extremely similar to what was on the exam. The break down of their course is parallel with NCEES and breaks each subject down in its entirety. Please try them, its worth the price. Took me 3 times, and I took SoPE, but found EET to be the best review course by far. 

The way I analyzed my own diagnostic after the first time I failed was highlighted any subject that I scored 50% or less on. I spent most of my time reviewing and doing practice problems on those areas.

After looking at your diagnostics there was definitely improvement from the 1st attempt versus the 2nd. I think you're close but may need to review a few topics from the AM and PM sessions. I took water resources so I'm unable to recommend anything for the construction depth, although I highly recommend these sites for the AM session:

https://civilpepractice.com/

https://www.peprepared.com/video-workshops (They sell these practice exams on amazon too)

Prep courses are great for understanding your reference materials, but most fall short on practice problems in my opinion. Taking practice exams and doing problems was hands down the only reason I passed. I think I did about 300+ problems outside of my prep course.

Just by looking at your AM scores, 24 isn't good enough at all. You should target at least 30-32 for AM. I found the topics on Project Planning, Means and Methods, and Site Development very general for all Civil disciplines. Anyone that has engineering work experience should be able to answer those relatively quickly with appropriate study and practice problems. On your second attempt you only got 5/12 on those 3 topics, which if you were able to answer them all correct, it would have brought you to 31 instead of 24 for AM. Continue to sharpen your strengths and don't let it go down again.

Also I am not sure what your exam strategy was. I have said elsewhere on this forum that I spent the first 5-10 minutes reading through all the 40 questions and determine the order I will go with. I was only able to answer around 55 questions with confidence, guessed educatedly with around 10, and literally putting all "A"s (for PM) or "C"s (for AM) down for the remaining 15 questions I had no idea with. The ABCDs are equally distributed (10 each) so you should have an idea on what answers choice would give you the best chance to win the lottery.

PEstruc said:

Failed twice, nearly identical results.  Project planning, means and methods, materials, and SITE DEVELOPMENT are pretty lacking for both exams.  I really need help finding materials helping me answer theory questions when it comes to those subjects.  

2nd attempt

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1st attempt

View attachment 13225

Any other opinions or advice would be appreciated.  For breadth the 2nd time around I had the School of PE breadth sites, but they didn't seem to help me much for the Site Development theory questions.  Seems to be mainly consolidation theory, and erosion control stuff that does me in. 

Click to expand...

Each test is different. So you can study what you did poor on the last exam, but it may not even be on the next one. That happened to me quite a bit. Just do as many problems as possible.  I used 8 practice exams plus some free online ones.  That, along with at least browsing each subject in the CERM helped me pass the 2nd time. 

Here are the practice books I used (for sale if you want):

1.      Civil PE Practice Exam: Breadth Exam Version B

2.      Civil PE Practice Exam: Breadth Exam Version C

3.      Civil PE Practice Exam: Water Resources Depth Version A

4.      Civil PE Practice Exam: Water Resources Depth Version B

5.      Mike's Civil PE Exam Guide: Morning Session

6.      Civil Engineering PE Practice – 2 full breadth exams

7.      NCEES PE Civil Water resources and environmental practice exam

8.      Civil PE Sample Examination, 4th Ed (Lindburg)

@PEstruc

I highly recommend EET breadth / depth, as another poster recommended. I was blessed to have an excellent materials background, so while all the EET material was review to me, it was good quality review.

Samir also does an excellent job with means and methods in the AM. I had no background with it until his lectures, and I felt very comfortable with those questions on the exam.

While plenty of people pass without a class, I can say 100% I wouldn’t have been so confident on my first attempt if I hadn’t gone with EET. I used their reference binders for 60-70% of questions and only went to my specific material for code trivia. No CERM manual at all.