Waiving the EIT

How many years of work experience do you need to waive the EIT in CA. It says 15 yrs?

But it says college can be used to count as 4 years of work experience. I am not sure if it means years of work experience before you can take the PE or years of work experience which can be applied to waive the EIT? So that would mean a BS + 11yrs of work experience and you could waive the EIT.

mprasad1x said:

How many years of work experience do you need to waive the EIT in CA. It says 15 yrs?But it says college can be used to count as 4 years of work experience. I am not sure if it means years of work experience before you can take the PE or years of work experience which can be applied to waive the EIT? So that would mean a BS + 11yrs of work experience and you could waive the EIT.

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Valid question. I'd contact the CA board for the official interpretation.

I believe you are correct, a BS and 11 years could be enough to waive the EIT, but I think they take these things on a case by case basis. I agree w/ MA and say give them a call.

I'm not 100% sure but you may also want to look into taking the PE without an EIT, I think if you take the EIT you'll be able to take the PE faster (at least i think that's the case for CA).

Someone else would probably be able to verify this.

I just called them. They were no help. They said you need 15 years work experience to waive the EIT. But they said you can use your 4 years of college and count that as 4 years of work experience. The clincher is that you can use college as work experience if you have an EIT.

I told her it made no sense and they were trying to defend it.

How in the world can you tell me that I can use college as work experience to waive the EIT but only if I already have an EIT. WTH.

So in other words you still need 15 years of experience according to them.

state board no help!?! I refuse to believe that!

And, do not try to use logic against them. They invented logic. If they say it makes sense, it does. If they say it, it is so. The state borad is never wrong.

And they deliver test results in a timely manner.

The California rules have different sections. Q3 covers the requirements for an EIT waiver. Q5 covers the requirements for admission to the PE exam. There is a slight -- but important -- difference between the two sections in the way they describe the experience requirements.

In Q3, it says you can qualify for an EIT waiver with an ABET-accredited engineering BS degree and 15+ years of "qualifying work experience". This term explicitly includes the word "work". So the term "qualifying work experience" means exactly what it says: it refers to work experience specifically.

In Q5, it says you can qualify for admission to the PE exam with 6+ years of "qualifying experience". This is a different term, because it omits the word "work". The term "qualifying experience" is more ambiguous and flexible: in fact, Q5 says that it can mean either work experience, or a combination of college (up to 4 years) and work experience.

Since you are applying for an EIT waiver under the rules of Q3, you are stuck with the less flexible term of "qualifying work experience". That means work experience specifically.

If you eventually apply for the PE exam under the rules of Q5, then you will have more flexibility, and will be able to apply your college experience towards the "qualifying experience" requirement. You won't really need it though, since the experience requirements for the EIT waiver are much more rigorous than those for the PE exam itself.

Wow... well done Tark!

Wow that is sneaky. Qualifying experience vs Qualifying Work experience. How crooked. It sounds like a bunch of lawyers wrote that just so they can interpret it differently just to hose people.

I really wasnt worried about the PE because it is concentrated in a specific area. But after 10 years I don't know how I would pass the EIT since it covers so many areas.

What I don't understand is why you need so much work experience to waive the EIT. You need to wait 15 years to waive the EIT, but the closer you get to 15 years of experience, the chances of passing the EIT grows less and less because you have been out of school so long. So what was the purpose of needing the EIT in the first place.

Besides 3/4ths of the EIT cover areas that you will not even use or that will be on the PE.

mprasad1x said:

I really wasnt worried about the PE because it is concentrated in a specific area. But after 10 years I don't know how I would pass the EIT since it covers so many areas.

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There are many people who wait until being out of school for many years to take the EIT. I've seen people take both tests on the same weekend and pass the PE but fail the EIT. It will demand a lot of studing but it is not imppossible.

It hasn't been mentioned previously in this thread, but there is a significant disadvantage to the EIT waiver route. Many (perhaps most?) states do not offer EIT waivers.

So if you get a PE license after an EIT waiver in California, you may not be eligible for licensure by comity in other states. Other states may still require you to pass the EIT exam for licensure, even if this requirement was waived by California.

So if you think you might eventually work on projects outside California, you may be better off simply taking the EIT exam, rather than requesting a waiver.

^Tark is exactly right. If you don't pass the EIT, you can't get licensed in states that require it, even if you have a license from CA. It's better to just bite the bullet and take the test, unless you plan to never leave CA.