# Civil AM Portion: My personal take on the exam prep



## new_at_this (May 30, 2018)

I passed the Civil WRE this cycle on my first attempt. I learned a lot from this forum. So, I decided to make a post detailing my experience in PE exam preparation and actual test taking.

Exam cycle: April 2018

Total preparation time: around 60 h.

                Put 10 h during Christmas/New Year

                30 h during March

               20 h during April.   

Review course:

             No review courses

Reference materials:

            1)      School of PE Refresher (SoPE) Notes (shared by one of my friends)

            2)      Civil Engineering Reference Manual (CERM) by Michael R. Lindeburg

            3)      Civil Engineering All-In-One PE Exam Guide (AIO): Breadth and Depth by Indranil Goswami

            4)      FE Reference Handbook for Civil (FRH) by NCEES

           5)      NCEES Practice Exam (NPE): 2011 and 2014 version

Things that I think helped me:

Exam Preparation:

                - I used NCEES exam specification as the only syllabus. I stick to that guideline and determined what are the chapters and topics that I need to review from CERM and AIO.

                - I put less focus on tabbing references. Rather I prepared a personal index for each topic mentioned in the NCEES exam specification. Under each topic, I also wrote down the relevant chapters, equations, references, and practice problems. This really helped me during the exam because based on the focus area of the exam problem, I exactly knew where to look at for relevant information.

                - I prepared separate binders for each focus area for AM.

                - I downloaded the Civil FRH from NCEES website (available for free, I think) and only printed the pages that are relevant to the posted PE exam specification. I found this very helpful during the exam. In fact, during the exam, I used FRH more than CERM for mathematical problems.

               - The AIO guidebook was my third reference handbook. It was excellent in terms of some short-cut equations (for example, slope stability or head-loss equation) where you can just plug and chuck values to get the answer depending on how the exam problem was set.

                - I attempted every at the end of chapters problem in the AIO book. I thought those were very good in terms of the difficulty of the actual exam and the skill tested.

               - In all the practice exams/practice problems, I used my index to make sure I can follow it to find relevant information.

                - Write down all the conversions that you frequently encounter, (e.g., psi to water height, acre-ft to inch, mgd* mg/l to lb/day) in the formula section of your reference materials. I printed the CERM appendix and index separately, did spiral binding, and the first page of those bindings were conversion formula.

                - I set aside some topics considering the effort vs return. For example, culverts and three-reservoir systems are the topics that I didn’t prepare for at all. Primarily because it’s just 2 problems out of 80 which could take a disproportionate amount of effort to prepare for.

Exam taking:

                -  Several people suggested it earlier but I will mention it once again because it’s THAT important: make several passes to complete your exam. I made 4 passes. In the first pass, I solved the problems that I exactly knew how to solve and was done under 3 minutes. I found at least 10 problems like that (including theoretical questions). In the second pass, I solved the problems that I knew how to solve but not sure how long they might take: I never spent more than 6 minutes in a problem at this stage. In the third pass, solve the problems that you are not sure how to solve but know the topic well. The fourth pass would be reserved for the last 15 minutes of the exam for wild guess: I hope you don’t need it. For me, the fourth pass involved 4 problems.

               -  The index of the reference was very helpful for me. I answered at least 3 theoretical questions just looking at the index, finding the correct page, and reading the relevant section.

              -   Two of the problems initially I had no idea how to solve (phase 4), however I was able to solve both of them just looking at the FRH. They had the exact equations to solve the problem. In the end, I think I got one of them correct. So, again if you are unsure what the problem is about look at your self-prepared index sheet/FRH formula

Disclosure: Now, because a diverse group of engineers take this exam, I thought as a disclosure, I should share my background. I received my bachelors in a foreign country approximately 10 years ago. My masters and PhD had a completely different focus from core civil engineering. Except for some WRE courses, I was out of touch with any Civil engineering courses for 10 years. However, I consider myself a good exam taker and have good GPA to support that. So, adjust your exam preparation plan accordingly.


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## KOKOMO777 (May 31, 2018)

Congrat! I've been out of school over 20 years. I didn't pass it the first attempt. I took the exam back in October 2017. I will re-take the exam again this October. I took SOPE review course both in WRE and Transportation. I am switching to Transportation. I spent earlier part of career in road design. I am taking similar approach like indexing the topic corresponding to the NCEES syllabus. I hope to pass it the 2nd time around.


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## new_at_this (Jun 1, 2018)

KOKOMO777 said:


> Congrat! I've been out of school over 20 years. I didn't pass it the first attempt. I took the exam back in October 2017. I will re-take the exam again this October. I took SOPE review course both in WRE and Transportation. I am switching to Transportation. I spent earlier part of career in road design. I am taking similar approach like indexing the topic corresponding to the NCEES syllabus. I hope to pass it the 2nd time around﻿.


Yeah, 20 years a too long of a time to remember any of those stuff. I suggest you take a good civil engineering dictionary to the exam room. There could be some theoretical question that you can answer just looking at definition of some terms. 

Also, I would suggest not to focus too much on actual review course material/video. Rather spend time on practicing sample problems. As you have already taken the exam, you have a pretty good idea what to expect. So, I were you, I would identify some problem types that were common on both the actual exam (Oct 2017) and the NCEES practice test. Practice those problem types first to make sure you answer them in 3-4 minutes. Also, may be write down the steps for solving some of the other problems. 

I wish you all the best for this October. Let me know if I can help anyway.


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## KOKOMO777 (Jun 1, 2018)

new_at_this said:


> Yeah, 20 years a too long of a time to remember any of those stuff. I suggest you take a good civil engineering dictionary to the exam room. There could be some theoretical question that you can answer just looking at definition of some terms.
> 
> Also, I would suggest not to focus too much on actual review course material/video. Rather spend time on practicing sample problems. As you have already taken the exam, you have a pretty good idea what to expect. So, I were you, I would identify some problem types that were common on both the actual exam (Oct 2017) and the NCEES practice test. Practice those problem types first to make sure you answer them in 3-4 minutes. Also, may be write down the steps for solving some of the other problems.
> 
> I wish you all the best for this October. Let me know if I can help anyway.


Thanks. I have been doing problems since the last exam. I lost track of hours spent reviewing and preparing for this October's exam. How were you able to get a hold of 2011 NCEES practice exam? I saw on one Ebay that cost an arm and a leg.


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## new_at_this (Jun 1, 2018)

KOKOMO777 said:


> Thanks. I have been doing problems since the last exam. I lost track of hours spent reviewing and preparing for this October's exam. How were you able to get a hold of 2011 NCEES practice exam? I saw on one Ebay that cost an arm and a leg﻿.


It was with bunch of legacy document for exam prep that one of my friends shared with me.


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## squarepegs (Aug 6, 2018)

More advice: do as many exam-realistic problems as you can get your hands on!  Here's a bunch: https://www.patreon.com/sqrpgz

Good luck!


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## droth (Mar 31, 2019)

new_at_this,

Would you be willing to share your index?

Thanks for your consideration of this request.


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## zenpeace (Aug 31, 2020)

Hi what is FRH ? FE Reference Handbook?


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