# Civil Engineering Solved Problems (CESP5), 5th Edition



## rmoutray (Jul 7, 2010)

I am have the CERM and want to by the practice problems, but I dont know if it is good buy. I am looking for practice problems which are most like the exam questions. I looked at the NCEES PE Civil Sample Questions and Solutions Book but it seams to me the in-deph questions are a waste of money - am I wrong? Should I buy both of these books?

The practice problems I am doing now are requiring me to look up data in manuals/codes I don't have and it is frustrating to me. Do these other books do the same thing?


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## sac_engineer (Jul 7, 2010)

rmoutray said:


> I am have the CERM and want to by the practice problems, but I dont know if it is good buy. I am looking for practice problems which are most like the exam questions. I looked at the NCEES PE Civil Sample Questions and Solutions Book but it seams to me the in-deph questions are a waste of money - am I wrong? Should I buy both of these books?
> The practice problems I am doing now are requiring me to look up data in manuals/codes I don't have and it is frustrating to me. Do these other books do the same thing?


I borrowed the practice problems book that accompanies the CERM and it didn't take me very long to realize that the questions are not reflective of what would be asked on the PE exam. The questions are very involved and take many steps to solve. I can see its usefulness for title exams such as structural or geotechnical, but for the PE exam, it's too specific.

I suggest investing in a few of the 6-minute solutions workbooks since they focus on breadth and depth exam-type questions. Also, I recommend the All-in-One Civil Eng PE Breadth and Depth textbook by Goswami.

I passed the CA PE exam, plus the surveying and seismic exams, on the first attempt mainly because I didn't get too bogged down on problems that required many steps to solve. I looked over them, but knew it would be unrealistic for those type of questions to appear on the exam.

Good luck!


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## maximus808 (Jul 7, 2010)

I've been using The Practice Problems as you mentioned to study and it's been helpful for the Transportation Section. I did not pass my first attempt but will be taking it this October. From what I have done so far (trans section) it has been helpful. I like the difficulty of the problems and how it refers to equations in the CERM and quick reference book. I might not find a similar problem on the exam but it teaches you how to search for the right equations and puts questions into real life situations. In any case, my failure was being caught up on tabbing my books and knowing where certain problems were instead of solving them. Solving problems I believe triggers a different part of your mind and puts you in a test situation environment than simply knowing where the problem is or looking for your tabs. Of course I would suggest tabbing your books to know where key equations and sections are. But I'm going into this next exam and simply volume of problems done.


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## Badger (Jul 8, 2010)

rmoutray said:


> I am have the CERM and want to by the practice problems, but I dont know if it is good buy. I am looking for practice problems which are most like the exam questions. I looked at the NCEES PE Civil Sample Questions and Solutions Book but it seams to me the in-deph questions are a waste of money - am I wrong? Should I buy both of these books?
> The practice problems I am doing now are requiring me to look up data in manuals/codes I don't have and it is frustrating to me. Do these other books do the same thing?


In my opinion the NCEES Civil Sample Questionsand Solutions is a must have book. The solutions are always very clear, so you might have to do some reading to figure out how they solved hte problems. Ttry all the breath questions, some are little bit simpler than the actual breath problems in my experience.

I think if you work all the breath questions, all the construction, geotechnical (most), the easy structural (about 3-4, ones not requiring codes, all the transportation, and all the water resources questions, you be able to answer about 60% of the breath questions easily.

I would use the CERM to solve these problems if you can and write down the formula and page number next to the NCEES problem number for future reference, that helped me.

Good luck.


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