# How ready do you feel?



## TehMightyEngineer (Mar 18, 2014)

Less than a month out, how do you guys feel about this coming exam?

As I'm taking lateral and work in a non-seismically active area I've been going nuts studying as much seismic design examples and references as I can. I've just about wrapped up wind design, wood, and steel to a comfortable level and am going to finish up concrete and masonry seismic. However, I feel that I don't have enough time to fully prepare for everything. Much worse than the vertical where I was essentially re-learning material from work and school.

Did other people feel similar when they were preparing for the lateral portion of the SE exam?


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## Lungshen (Mar 19, 2014)

I am sure you will do fine, pirate.

I felt quite the opposite when I was taking lateral portion of the SE. It was a narrower topic than vertical. There is really not that much to cover on the wood and masonry part of the seismic. Concrete is just the special detailing part that you need to be familiar. Most challenge part is steel. Make sure you review those design examples in the seismic design manual. I think I spent most of my study time on that part. Also know the seismic part of ASCE like back of your hand, especial those couple liner paragraphs that don't give you an equation but tell you what to do. If you have time left I would recommend read ASCE one last time couple days before D Day.

If you put in more than hundred hours of study you should be fine. I took it last year and passed first try. The morning section was tough...too much bridge problems :/ but I was rock and Rollin in the afternoon. I felt that afternoon problems were practical and fair game and more "real world" problems not just text book problems.

I think Vertical was a lot tougher because of broader material and I think I put close to 200 hours on it.


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## TehMightyEngineer (Mar 19, 2014)

Maybe that's my problem in that I too realized that the two parts that I suspect will trip me up are basic analysis methods (arg, moment distribution, please don't be on the exam!) and steel seismic design. I've probably spent about 3/4 of my time studying the seismic design in the SEAOC Vol 1 and the AISC Seismic Design Manual. Thus, I guess it seems like I'm being disproportionate in my studying. Good to know that I took a similar approach.

Yeah, I'm building a mental list of "last minute" refresher items before the exam day that I'm going to go over to get them super fresh in my head.

Nice, hopefully vertical does prove to be harder. I do agree that the amount of material they can pull from is much, much higher for vertical.


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## cajone5 (Mar 21, 2014)

I found lateral pretty difficult in comparison to vertical. I am a structural engineer but I do not do "conventional" design work and only loosely work with the typical codes. As a result, study times required for me were much higher...

My first time I took both exams. Probably studied 200 hrs for the vertical and 100 for the lateral. Passed vertical and failed lateral.

Second time, I spent about 300 hrs studying lateral and passed.

While the scope of lateral design is narrower, the material is much more nuanced and difficult (IMO). Maybe it's different for folks who do conventional design work, but I found the lateral exam _really_ tested your knowledge of the codes where vertical was much more testing _common sense _and _engineering judgement_


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## Agostage (Mar 21, 2014)

My experience is the same as cajone5, lateral is far more code heavy which in the case of seismic and even wind, the devil is in the details.



cajone5 said:


> I found lateral pretty difficult in comparison to vertical. I am a structural engineer but I do not do "conventional" design work and only loosely work with the typical codes. As a result, study times required for me were much higher...
> 
> My first time I took both exams. Probably studied 200 hrs for the vertical and 100 for the lateral. Passed vertical and failed lateral.
> 
> ...


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