# CBT PE exam result



## babuateb (Feb 8, 2022)

How quickly did you receive your CBT PE exam result? Thnaks.


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## tsega60 (Feb 9, 2022)

I took my exam on a Friday and received my results through NCEES the next Wednesday.


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## RBHeadge PE (Feb 9, 2022)

CBT results come out the Wednesday the week after the exam is taken. IIRC its at 11AM eastern. So the wait is anywhere from 4-11 days.


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## DLD PE (Feb 9, 2022)

I took the CBT on a Thursday, and got my results the following Wednesday. I received the e-mail from NCEES at 10:01, although I didn't check my e-mail until 10:15, and logged onto NCEES five minutes letter to check the results.


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## DBLM10 (Feb 9, 2022)

DLD PE said:


> I took the CBT on a Thursday, and got my results the following Wednesday. I received the e-mail from NCEES at 10:01, although I didn't check my e-mail until 10:15, and logged onto NCEES five minutes letter to check the results.


Did you take CBT PE STRUCTURE ? How was it? Did they give you all the reference materials, full versions of codes?


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## DBLM10 (Feb 9, 2022)

tsega60 said:


> I took my exam on a Friday and received my results through NCEES the next Wednesday.


Did you take CBT PE STRUCTURE? How was it? Did they give you all the reference materials, full versions of codes?


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## Eng_Girl95 (Feb 9, 2022)

DBLM10 said:


> Did you take CBT PE STRUCTURE? How was it? Did they give you all the reference materials, full versions of codes?


PE Structural is not computer based.

PE Civil: Structural is.


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## DLD PE (Feb 10, 2022)

I took the electrical power CBT.


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## tsega60 (Feb 10, 2022)

DBLM10 said:


> Did you take CBT PE STRUCTURE ? How was it? Did they give you all the reference materials, full versions of codes?


I took the CBT PE - Mechanical (HVAC & Refrigeration). Since it's computer based, the only available resource is the reference booklet (PDF). However, there were some questions that were definitely not on that PDF that i just had to just guess on. I'm slightly curious to know what my passing score was but then again, i passed and that's all that matters!


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## Ryan0123 (Feb 15, 2022)

I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..

As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test… 

First the reference manuals - ALL reference manuals listed as required material are available and you can pull up at any time during the exam (yes even in the morning portion). The general reference is also provided. The references were OK, as some were very organized in chapters and you can pull up one chapter at a time - others were poorly organized and were bookmarked by key sections. There is a page up and page down feature so you can jump from page to page but it was VERY laggy and took a second to bring up each page.. You can ONLY bring up one reference manual at a time. 

Now to the actual test…The morning exam started out like a normal paper exam but quickly turned to a “WTF is this”. The paper exams that I have taken were very “cookie cutter” - for example you knew you were getting 40 questions in the morning and 7 of said questions were going to be water resource questions.. Well you can throw that right out the window for the CBT. The questions were all over the place- I had 41 questions before my scheduled break and oh don’t assume all those 41 questions are typical morning questions like on the paper exam - I had “afternoon structural depth” questions in those 41 questions - yeah I said WTF too!

One very nice feature that is different than the paper exam, is that you CAN take as much or as little time on the morning questions and have extra/less time for the afternoon portion (note that you can’t go back to the morning after you take your break).. I used this to my advantage.. let me take a side and say that I was VERY prepared for this exam - I studied basically every day for the last 3 years.. With that being said, I felt the morning was pretty straight forward (aside from the depth questions that were thrown in). I looked at the reference manual very little as most questions were conceptual. My goal was to leave at least 5 hours for the depth portion. I ended the morning with 5.5 hours left on the clock… 

Now to the afternoon structural depth.. And all I can say is WOW! Again, I left myself a solid 5.5 hours to complete the depth and I used every single minute of it.. I truly believe that a PHD in structural engineering could NOT complete the structural afternoon in 4 hours.. There were ZERO “gimme” questions. EVERY SINGLE QUESTION needed one of the manuals… I was very familiar with the manuals and it still took an average of 3-5 minutes to navigate to the correct page in the manual. And oh yeah the “searchable” feature is a waste of time in my opinion. I tried to search one question and it brought up about 2000 hits - can’t go through that many in 6 minutes.

I really think the NCEES dropped the ball on the structural depth and is getting a little out of hand.. Tricky question after tricky question, and asking questions that NOBODY does in the structural engineering field.. I took probably 10 practice exams INCLUDING an SE Vertical practice exam and ALL of those were much simpler than this test.

Anyways - hopefully you guys like the review - I think I’m the first to post about the new CBT PE Civil Exam..


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## DBLM10 (Feb 15, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..
> 
> As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test…
> 
> ...


First of all, I would like to wish you all the best for your result. Wooww, that's entirely different from the paper-based Structural PE exam. They are making it harder to pass this time, Yes, you were the first to post about the CBT PE exam. Thank you for helping us out. Good luck.


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## John1008 (Feb 15, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..
> 
> As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test…
> 
> ...


I am in a similar situation. I took the paper based PE Civil Structural Exam last October (48/80 for the curious people) and recently took the CBT version late last week. Although, I wouldn't say I was anywhere near 3 years of preparedness; I was very ready for the exam. I agree with what you say about the morning portion. I took my time and used all of the 4 hours I planned on using to make sure I had no silly mistakes. Working in structures the field had me more than ready for the morning structures questions that were thrown out there.

The afternoon was a time-crunch to say the least! Unless you know exactly where to look for the conceptual code-specific questions, you will be scrolling for days on end because of the amount of returns the search bar gave me. Personally, I had to basically guess on quite a few questions as I spent too much time scrolling (BTW scrolling was snail-like) to the sections that I needed to get to. I would double-down on your advice and leave no less than 5 hours for the second half.

Hopefully the "cut score" adjusts for the amount of time is used to scroll through the sections. Looking forward to the test results and can only hope for a better result this time.


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## steel (Feb 15, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> Now to the actual test…The morning exam started out like a normal paper exam but quickly turned to a “WTF is this”. The paper exams that I have taken were very “cookie cutter” - for example you knew you were getting 40 questions in the morning and 7 of said questions were going to be water resource questions.. Well you can throw that right out the window for the CBT. The questions were all over the place- I had 41 questions before my scheduled break and oh don’t assume all those 41 questions are typical morning questions like on the paper exam - I had “afternoon structural depth” questions in those 41 questions - yeah I said WTF too!


NCEES has been very transparent with the fact that the exam is not necessarily split evenly with the number of questions in the morning versus afternoon. Only 70 problems are scored. The other 10 you saw were experimental. So, if 6 were breadth content and 4 were depth content, that means your morning session would have 41 questions (70 / 2 + 6).

Also, you might be confusing structural depth questions with the "Structural Mechanics" section in the morning. Some of those, even on the P&P last October, I found to be good candidates for the afternoon section! SO it's not out the question for NCEES to throw in depth questions in the morning portion.



Ryan0123 said:


> And oh yeah the “searchable” feature is a waste of time in my opinion. I tried to search one question and it brought up about 2000 hits - can’t go through that many in 6 minutes.


Like searching _any _pdf or website, you have to know_ what_ to search for. Otherwise, yeah, you're gonna get thousands of results. My approach for the exam in a few weeks is going to be search for keywords, methods, chapter titles, etc. Not sure how general you were making your searches, though, so I could be off here.


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## John1008 (Feb 15, 2022)

steelnole15 said:


> Like searching _any _pdf or website, you have to know_ what_ to search for. Otherwise, yeah, you're gonna get thousands of results. My approach for the exam in a few weeks is going to be search for keywords, methods, chapter titles, etc. Not sure how general you were making your searches, though, so I could be off here.


100% agree with this. For example, say you are looking for a specific bending moment diagram and don't exactly remember the table number in the AISC code or even the part/chapter for whatever reason. Searching "moment diagram" won't get you anywhere, neither will "shear" "moment" or "deflection" but they are all within the table title. You have to either memorize the relative locations within the codes or use the index. Which resorting to indexing defeats the purpose of tabbing your book for the old version of the test.

Not saying any structural engineer would not know where to find a moment diagram or how to quickly create one. This example was only for everyone's information on the additional steps that are now required for the CBT test. Overall, I like the accessibility of the new version of the test. There are new learning curves that every test taker will have to become accustomed to.


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## Ryan0123 (Feb 15, 2022)

steelnole15 said:


> NCEES has been very transparent with the fact that the exam is not necessarily split evenly with the number of questions in the morning versus afternoon. Only 70 problems are scored. The other 10 you saw were experimental. So, if 6 were breadth content and 4 were depth content, that means your morning session would have 41 questions (70 / 2 + 6).
> 
> Also, you might be confusing structural depth questions with the "Structural Mechanics" section in the morning. Some of those, even on the P&P last October, I found to be good candidates for the afternoon section! SO it's not out the question for NCEES to throw in depth questions in the morning portion.
> 
> ...


I understand what you mean. And at first I thought the same thing.. That it is just a harder “structural mechanics” question. Without getting into any specifics. Last time I checked, the morning structural mechanics questions didn’t require the use of a “structural depth” design manual that wouldn’t be available to someone who wasn’t taking the structural depth.. maybe I should have been more clear on that.. but trust me I wasn’t confusing the two… Agree with the searchable feature, maybe I just wasn’t well versed in it. But also remember, the NCEES knows people are banking on searching something to quickly get the answer and they can’t allow anything to be that easy (I might be a tad biased). So my point was, don’t bank on it being very helpful..


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## steel (Feb 16, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> But also remember, the NCEES knows people are banking on searching something to quickly get the answer and they can’t allow anything to be that easy (I might be a tad biased). So my point was, don’t bank on it being very helpful..


I disagree. They cannot change the content of the codes they give you. So it isn't really up to them to decide how easy searching is. They have very rigid rules for the questions they can ask you. For example, they can't give you a basic question on shear and moment diagrams and then intentionally make it difficult to find the page with the diagrams in the steel manual. And I've done CBT exams before when it was the FE and I found the search feature extremely easy to use and helpful.

Also, I think having some "depth" questions in the structural mechanics portion actually plays to our (structurals') strength! Since we'll be given the steel manual, that's an extra resource we have that can potentially give us an advantage over the other disciplines taking the same morning session on the same day at the same place. But that was true for the P&P too. A geotech that didn't bring the steel manual would be at the same disadvantage they'd be at today.


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## John1008 (Feb 16, 2022)

To help answer the thread question, I got my results last night at Tuesday 10:00 p.m. The turn around was a rapid ~4.5 days! I passed!!!


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## civilrobot PE etc etc (Feb 16, 2022)

John1008 said:


> To help answer the thread question, I got my results last night at Tuesday 10:00 p.m. The turn around was a rapid ~4.5 days! I passed!!!


Congratulations!!


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## tsega60 (Feb 16, 2022)

John1008 said:


> To help answer the thread question, I got my results last night at Tuesday 10:00 p.m. The turn around was a rapid ~4.5 days! I passed!!!


Congrats!!!


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## RBHeadge PE (Feb 16, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> Now to the actual test…The morning exam started out like a normal paper exam but quickly turned to a “WTF is this”. The paper exams that I have taken were very “cookie cutter” - for example you knew you were getting 40 questions in the morning and 7 of said questions were going to be water resource questions.. Well you can throw that right out the window for the CBT. The questions were all over the place- I had 41 questions before my scheduled break and oh don’t assume all those 41 questions are typical morning questions like on the paper exam - I had “afternoon structural depth” questions in those 41 questions - yeah I said WTF too!
> 
> One very nice feature that is different than the paper exam, is that you CAN take as much or as little time on the morning questions and have extra/less time for the afternoon portion (note that you can’t go back to the morning after you take your break).. I used this to my advantage.. let me take a side and say that I was VERY prepared for this exam - I studied basically every day for the last 3 years.. With that being said, I felt the morning was pretty straight forward (aside from the depth questions that were thrown in). I looked at the reference manual very little as most questions were conceptual. My goal was to leave at least 5 hours for the depth portion. I ended the morning with 5.5 hours left on the clock…


Thanks for the review!

Would you say in general that the order of the questions followed the major categories found in the exam spec? CE-Const found here. IIRC the order is supposed to flow directly from the spec.



FYI to all: the number of questions in each spec is also listed in the exam spec. But they do a poor job explaining what that range actually means. The smaller number is the bare minimum of questions one may expect from that category. The larger number is +50% of that smaller number and is the maximum number of questions that may be from that category. One should probably expect to see more than the minimum for each section.
You won't see the maximum from each category because their is an upper limit to the number of questions on a given exam. CE is now maxed at 80 questions, but IIRC other exams max out at 85.
I've read elsewhere that there are "experimental" questions on the exam but I have yet to see anything official from NCEES on the existence of experimental PPE problems, nor the number of graded vs ungraded questions on any given exam. I haven't found anything about it on their website. Examinees should attempt each question as if it is graded.


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## RBHeadge PE (Feb 16, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> EVERY SINGLE QUESTION needed one of the manuals… I was very familiar with the manuals and it still took an average of 3-5 minutes to navigate to the correct page in the manual. And oh yeah the “searchable” feature is a waste of time in my opinion. I tried to search one question and it brought up about 2000 hits - can’t go through that many in 6 minutes.





Ryan0123 said:


> But also remember, the NCEES knows people are banking on searching something to quickly get the answer and they can’t allow anything to be that easy (I might be a tad biased).


If the exam committee did their job correctly, then they would have removed from the exam bank all of the questions that could be solved by any literate person and a "ctrl-f". I've heard rumors that that removed a large chunk of questions out of several disciplines' exams. 
But removing those questions aren't the same as what you are describing above. The exam designers probably didn't intend for the examinees to need to spend most of their time-budget just scrolling through the PDF. I would hope that that feedback would somehow make it back to NCEES or the exam committee so they can adjust things in the future.



Ryan0123 said:


> So my point was, don’t bank on it being very helpful..


 
I've been beating this drum for a couple years now. Examinees should know the supplied PDFs as well as they know their regular resources before taking the exam.



John1008 said:


> To help answer the thread question, I got my results last night at Tuesday 10:00 p.m. The turn around was a rapid ~4.5 days! I passed!!!


Congratulations!


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## Ryan0123 (Feb 16, 2022)

RBHeadge PE said:


> Thanks for the review!
> 
> Would you say in general that the order of the questions followed the major categories found in the exam spec? CE-Const found here. IIRC the order is supposed to flow directly from the spec.
> 
> ...


Yes! Good point I forgot to mentioned.. The breadth did follow that format and for the most part had the range of questions for each category… I’ve read the forum where people have mentioned about throwing questions out, but like you said, you have to approach every question like it is being graded.. The depth questions “seemed” all over the place (not in a specific order). The main “wtf moment” in the breadth, was the structural depth questions I had. Maybe those were the throw out questions, I dont know but when you are asking, “Based on design manual X….” That IS a depth problem…that was asked in my first 41 questions before my scheduled break (morning). To me that’s unfair, and someone stated above that “It’s your discipline, you should know it”.. while that is somewhat true, I guarantee if you ask anyone on here if they would rather have a morning breadth problem or a depth problem, they will pick breadth any day of the week!


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## steel (Feb 17, 2022)

RBHeadge PE said:


> Thanks for the review!
> 
> Would you say in general that the order of the questions followed the major categories found in the exam spec? CE-Const found here. IIRC the order is supposed to flow directly from the spec.
> 
> I've read elsewhere that there are "experimental" questions on the exam but I have yet to see anything official from NCEES on the existence of experimental PPE problems, nor the number of graded vs ungraded questions on any given exam. I haven't found anything about it on their website. Examinees should attempt each question as if it is graded.


I spoke directly with NCEES regarding the experimental questions. There are 10 experimental questions used for research purposes and question-testing, etc. At least on the PE: Civil. So, out of the 80 questions you see, only 70 are scored, but there is absolutely no way to tell which ones are scored. 

But, that changes how many questions you see in the first half vs. second half. If 6 of the experimental questions are breadth material, you'll have 70 / 2 + 6 = 41 questions in the first half and 80 - 41 = 39 questions in the second half.


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## Tim - formerly @ NCEES (Feb 17, 2022)

RBHeadge PE said:


> FYI to all: the number of questions in each spec is also listed in the exam spec. But they do a poor job explaining what that range actually means. The smaller number is the bare minimum of questions one may expect from that category. The larger number is +50% of that smaller number and is the maximum number of questions that may be from that category. One should probably expect to see more than the minimum for each section.
> You won't see the maximum from each category because their is an upper limit to the number of questions on a given exam. CE is now maxed at 80 questions, but IIRC other exams max out at 85.
> I've read elsewhere that there are "experimental" questions on the exam but I have yet to see anything official from NCEES on the existence of experimental PPE problems, nor the number of graded vs ungraded questions on any given exam. I haven't found anything about it on their website. Examinees should attempt each question as if it is graded.



From the examinee guide:




Depending on which topics need items to build up the bank determines where the pretest items are located. That's why there are ranges to each topic.


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## PhN (Feb 17, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..
> 
> As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test…
> 
> ...


Thank you for the review. You mentioned there are a lot of conceptual questions. How do you study for these conceptual questions?


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## PhN (Feb 17, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..
> 
> As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test…
> 
> ...


Thank you for the review. You mentioned that there are a lot of conceptual questions. How do you study for these conceptual questions?


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## civilrobot PE etc etc (Feb 17, 2022)

PhN said:


> Thank you for the review. You mentioned that there are a lot of conceptual questions. How do you study for these conceptual questions?


I didn't take a CBT, but I studied for and took P+P. You have to understand the topic/subject well enough where you can create your own scenario/example with your own numbers to answer the question. I also drew out the question. If you understand what's being asked and you understand the notes or sections of a reference that you read about that topic, then you should be able to answer the question.


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## Ryan0123 (Feb 18, 2022)

Yeah agree with what Civilrobot said above.. You should study to learn/refresh concepts and do practice problems.. if you just did one or the other, I don’t think it would be enough to pass.. basically I followed what the NCEES lays out in their “ exam specifications” (see what Headge shared above) and studied everything I could possibly find on these subjects and every type of problem and ways they can ask these types of problems on the exam…


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## CCstruct (Feb 23, 2022)

I took the Civil: Structural PE CBT on Saturday 2/19 and got my results this morning (the following Wednesday) just after 8am. I had to look in my junk email folder which was weird. I passed on my first attempt. While not every state allows this i highly recommend taking the PE as soon as you can after the FE. I am in my last semester of Masters degree and i took the FE in July. I can only imagine how much harder the breadth section would be after a few years of only structural work! As far as the test i felt less comfortable in the morning breadth part than the structural depth. I had 41 morning questions (so 6 experimental) and 39 afternoon ( 4 exp) after my first pass i flagged about 15 in the morning and 11 afternoon questions i wanted to go back and look at or had no idea. I ended up with only a handful structural where i really wasn’t sure, but 9-12 on the morning part (some were flat out guesses). I felt the structural questions were exceedingly easier than the practice test they provide. Some codes you can search entirely, some you must know the chapter but honestly it was never an issue. You should know the codes well enough especially steel. When it was an issue the index was a huge help. the week of the test i did their 80 question practice test, and i did 3, 40 question timed breadth tests… and that’s it, which is why i recommend taking this sooner than later while all this info is fresh on your mind. For those who don’t have this luxury i would look up how to use every formula in the reference manual you don’t know how to use. Cause beyond that it’s the non calculation theory questions and watching your units under pressure that’s the hard part.


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## BreEngine (Feb 24, 2022)

CCstruct said:


> I took the Civil: Structural PE CBT on Saturday 2/19 and got my results this morning (the following Wednesday) just after 8am. I had to look in my junk email folder which was weird. I passed on my first attempt. While not every state allows this i highly recommend taking the PE as soon as you can after the FE. I am in my last semester of Masters degree and i took the FE in July. I can only imagine how much harder the breadth section would be after a few years of only structural work! As far as the test i felt less comfortable in the morning breadth part than the structural depth. I had 41 morning questions (so 6 experimental) and 39 afternoon ( 4 exp) after my first pass i flagged about 15 in the morning and 11 afternoon questions i wanted to go back and look at or had no idea. I ended up with only a handful structural where i really wasn’t sure, but 9-12 on the morning part (some were flat out guesses). I felt the structural questions were exceedingly easier than the practice test they provide. Some codes you can search entirely, some you must know the chapter but honestly it was never an issue. You should know the codes well enough especially steel. When it was an issue the index was a huge help. the week of the test i did their 80 question practice test, and i did 3, 40 question timed breadth tests… and that’s it, which is why i recommend taking this sooner than later while all this info is fresh on your mind. For those who don’t have this luxury i would look up how to use every formula in the reference manual you don’t know how to use. Cause beyond that it’s the non calculation theory questions and watching your units under pressure that’s the hard part.


Congratulations!


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## DBLM10 (Feb 24, 2022)

John1008 said:


> To help answer the thread question, I got my results last night at Tuesday 10:00 p.m. The turn around was a rapid ~4.5 days! I passed!!!


Congrats !!! Thanks for the review.


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## DBLM10 (Feb 24, 2022)

CCstruct said:


> I took the Civil: Structural PE CBT on Saturday 2/19 and got my results this morning (the following Wednesday) just after 8am. I had to look in my junk email folder which was weird. I passed on my first attempt. While not every state allows this i highly recommend taking the PE as soon as you can after the FE. I am in my last semester of Masters degree and i took the FE in July. I can only imagine how much harder the breadth section would be after a few years of only structural work! As far as the test i felt less comfortable in the morning breadth part than the structural depth. I had 41 morning questions (so 6 experimental) and 39 afternoon ( 4 exp) after my first pass i flagged about 15 in the morning and 11 afternoon questions i wanted to go back and look at or had no idea. I ended up with only a handful structural where i really wasn’t sure, but 9-12 on the morning part (some were flat out guesses). I felt the structural questions were exceedingly easier than the practice test they provide. Some codes you can search entirely, some you must know the chapter but honestly it was never an issue. You should know the codes well enough especially steel. When it was an issue the index was a huge help. the week of the test i did their 80 question practice test, and i did 3, 40 question timed breadth tests… and that’s it, which is why i recommend taking this sooner than later while all this info is fresh on your mind. For those who don’t have this luxury i would look up how to use every formula in the reference manual you don’t know how to use. Cause beyond that it’s the non calculation theory questions and watching your units under pressure that’s the hard part.


Congratulations!


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## steel (Mar 4, 2022)

Just got out of the PE Civil: Structural exam!

First impressions:
1) DAMN they made the morning session more difficult. Significantly more conceptual questions than I thought there would be, and more difficult than the last two times I took it (Apr and Oct 2021).
2) I love how the 8-hour clock starts on the first questions and only pauses for your 50-minute break after you finish the first 40 (+/-) questions. I had 41 in the first half, and 39 in the second. I managed to complete the first session in 3 hours which gave me plenty of time for the second session, but I still finished with an hour left.
3) The markers they give you for the dry erase notepads are absolute shit. Leave the cap off for 2 minutes and it dries out. Also, the tips break off easily. But you raise it in the air and they give you another one. But seriously, invest in some better markets, Pearson.

Overall, I am confident that I got about 25 right in the morning and between 25-30 on the afternoon. The worst case scenario where I got all 10 “experimental” questions right still nets me a 40-45 out of 70 scores questions. Hopefully that’s enough.
Also, weird glitch with the NDS 2015, where the “le” for effective length was not showing up in the reference. The e was there, but the “l” was not. Brought it up to the people there and they said they’d let NCEES know.


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## DLD PE (Mar 4, 2022)

steelnole15 said:


> Just got out of the PE Civil: Structural exam!
> 
> First impressions:
> 1) DAMN they made the morning session more difficult. Significantly more conceptual questions than I thought there would be, and more difficult than the last two times I took it (Apr and Oct 2021).
> ...


Hey Steel, good luck! Hope you get a positive result next week!


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## CCstruct (Mar 4, 2022)

steelnole15 said:


> Just got out of the PE Civil: Structural exam!
> 
> First impressions:
> 1) DAMN they made the morning session more difficult. Significantly more conceptual questions than I thought there would be, and more difficult than the last two times I took it (Apr and Oct 2021).
> ...


Took the same test on the 19th and i felt the same way about the first half of the test. Hadn’t taken it before but felt like the breadth material was overall harder than the structural. Thought the structural was way easier than the sample test they gave out. Personally if i had to take it again i would use more time on the morning than afternoon. I too had 41 and 39. Good luck!


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## PassPE (Mar 5, 2022)

We wish everyone Good Luck on the CBT Exams!


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## Pra4surf1 (Mar 5, 2022)

steelnole15 said:


> Just got out of the PE Civil: Structural exam!
> 
> First impressions:
> 1) DAMN they made the morning session more difficult. Significantly more conceptual questions than I thought there would be, and more difficult than the last two times I took it (Apr and Oct 2021).
> ...


Fingers crossed charger hope you got it done this time!!


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## zachmccormick33 (Mar 5, 2022)

Good luck!


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## Katelyn Benoit (May 4, 2022)

Has anyone that has retaken or taken the PE Civil Structural recently went through EET review course for CBT review for the breadth? I'm currently doing their EET review on demand for the breadth and was curious if anyone found it to really prepare them for the CBT version now.


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## Dasdbomb (Oct 28, 2022)

Ryan0123 said:


> I’ll go ahead and get this started… Yesterday I took the PE Civil Structural CBT and I’ll write a little review as it looks like people are very anxious to see what the new format is like… To start, I took the paper exam a few times so I will compare the two..
> 
> As you guys know, the test has changed a lot, I won’t go into detail about the check in process as it is similar to the CBT FE exam (and video that NCEES provides). I’ll start at when I sat down to take the test…
> 
> ...


I also just took the structural test and found out that I failed by like 3-4 points and makes me want to explode. I can definitely handle not passing something, my high school career was full of it. My problem is that the questions on the “structural” test , had very little to do with structures. At my work I consistently design structures and own and run a consulting company. I have other people review and stamp my designs that work with me.
The questions were so frustrating and not only not typical structural questions, they were no in the fashion of design and so you didn’t know what to disregard as had already been performed in calculations. For example confusion they would not tell you if the load was factored or service in some questions. That’s just a small example. The rest of the example was scattered with lots of project planning questions, water and transportation problems and not just the basics either it had some stuff that I felt was beyond breadth study material. I literally didn’t perform one design the entire test. Not a concrete beam not anything. The closest thing to a design question I got had to do with deflection and the computer screen was so blurry I had a really hard time readying the proper deflection formula to isolate MOI. Even the testing evnvironment sucks. It’s literally like a jail pod and you are hungry and thirsty the whole time a forget about it if you smoke. Ex smoker here but I still hit an electronic cigarette during the day and they wouldn’t let me do anything but escort me to take a piss. 

I’m bitter AF about this as I design things using hand calculations almost everyday in multiple different materials and that knowledge was pretty much useless for that test. I will know how to prepare next time and that is a huge waste of my time because I will never need to know to inspect a column for fire retardation. My advice, I even did the PPi review corse and the study materials were way off from what was on the test. I felt like I got tested on everything that I don’t use for designing structures. Only good thing is I can take it sooner than 6 months. But who the fuck wants to subject themselves to that pressure and loss of time to study about shit that is useless. No engineers should work outside their discipline anyways.


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## jkx (Nov 1, 2022)

I took the PE Civil Structural exam last week, currently awaiting my results (one more day...). I'm torn about how the test questions were set up. I also had a 41/39 split for the morning/afternoon. I had some morning questions that specifically said according to XXX code what would this number be? While they were "easier" if it was a "depth" question it would definitely not be a fair breadth question. I did the School of PE class and I thought it was a good prep class. The breadth they focus more on how to do examples, so some of the conceptual breadth questions can be difficult. All I can say for those are to know why/how the equations work (dimensional analysis was extremely helpful) and you should be good.

For the afternoon, I agree with the general sentiments about it being significantly harder than the morning but for me a lot of the troubles were navigating codes. I know my PDF codes very well, for work I have personal bookmarks I've made to navigate more easily but for practicing for the exam and School of PE review course I used a basic pdf with whatever bookmarks chapters are provided in a standard download from Techstreet (work subscription). My issue with this was the inconsistency between code setup during the exam. Some codes you can only bring up one chapter at a time, but with subsections bookmarked, other codes you can bring up the entire code but bookmarks are for the whole chapter. My main issue is this makes it inconsistent for searching/solving equations. If you can only bring up a chapter search and navigation is easy but if an equation or variable is referenced in another chapter you end up bouncing around for a while. (I suggest writing down your entire overall equation, and then write down if you need to go somewhere else what section, I bounced around for 4 mins on a question before I made this my default process). Fortunately if you switch between those popups you are brought back to the last page you had open, I cant remember if the page memory was reset every question or not.

If the window brought up the whole code your search starts from the beginning of the code and you end up trying to cross reference what page the chapter you need starts on and hopefully you can "filter" your results like that. If that code has different page numbers than what the search shows (some codes will use page numbers that restart every chapter/section etc) you're shooting in the dark for a while. I don't want to post a specific example, but for one problem I knew exactly which chapter and section I needed to go to, but it still took me 2 minutes to just manually scroll to that equation after I got to the correct chapter...

The only potential solution I have for this is if you are registered with NCEES they should give you a web portal or something where you can use the codes as they are going to be organized on your exam day. Exam is based on codes that are a few revisions older anyway.

This isn't to scare anyone about the exam, I'm just extremely particular about consistency so these things bothered me. Some tips for anyone taking a CBT PE exam, from someone who is an anxious mess (I've taken GMAT, PMP, and PE all at Pearson with similar experiences)
1) Ask the Pearsons proctor for 2 notepads. Mine said no problem and gave me 2. If they say no be nice and mention the exam is 8 hours with 1 scheduled break and 40 math based questions per block. Most staff will give you one so they don't have to switch it out in the middle of the exam for you.
2) Check your pen BEFORE you even go in the room, and check it well, draw long lines.
3) make the most of your "uncounted time" and don't just click start exam. When you go in you have up to 8 minutes for a CBT tutorial. Use this time to set up your space. I set my cough drops (individually unwrapped in a clear ziplock bag), eye drops (those rooms are dry as hell), put in earplugs, put my pad, pen, keyboard, and mouse where I wanted them and put my locker key and ID somewhere out of the way. After your lunch break you may have a bit of time to redo your setup.
4) a lot of people talk about 6 minutes per problem, but that makes for messy numbers. I tried to track 5 problems, 30 minutes. If I had to redo the exam i'd do 5 problems in 20-25 minutes morning and leave myself at least 4.5 hours for the afternoon. Afternoon try for the 5/30 which should leave you some time to review your flags.
5) Speaking of flags, at the very least you should put down your best guess on a flagged questions. Don't leave anything blank in case you don't have enough time to come back.
6) This is not a "real world design" exam, don't bring in your work shortcuts or methods. This is minimum competencies measured across the country. So it's really more of an academic test. This was harder for me since I graduated college 10 years ago.

EDIT
I passed!


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