# SE - 1



## Hromis1 (Apr 19, 2010)

Ladies and Gents, please no specifics. But how did you feel.....

Me - Morning fairly straight forward. Afternoon a few surprises...lord I hope I passed.

You were sunk if you did not have ALL the references. AND have them tabbed well. Knowing were tables were in the books was important.

There were several questions you could not have answered with the SERM, and if you could it would have taken a long time.


----------



## DJsigma (Apr 19, 2010)

I was completely overwhelmed by the test. I put in a great deal of time, effort, and money into studying. I felt fairly confident going into the test. That confidence was completely shattered after about an hour into it. I think my main two mistakes were not having the AASHTO reference, and spending too much time second guessing my answers.


----------



## Hromis1 (Apr 19, 2010)

DJ, this was my third, and hopefully last time for the SE-1. Yes, I made those same mistakes this first time, including taking OLD codes into the exam. Big msitake. Even if you had the AASHTO book, you had to have gone through it some. BUT....that still does not mean you failed...it just means you have to get luckier or do better on other areas. Even if you could narrow it down to two options you increase your chances.

There was one general category of timber problems that I looked at for 30 seconds and decided I was too tired to look over the night before. Sure enough that problem type was on the exam 3 or 4 times....I was I had that 10 minutes of my life over to study those harder.


----------



## jazzman (Apr 19, 2010)

Hromis1 said:


> Ladies and Gents, please no specifics. But how did you feel.....
> Me - Morning fairly straight forward. Afternoon a few surprises...lord I hope I passed.
> 
> You were sunk if you did not have ALL the references. AND have them tabbed well. Knowing were tables were in the books was important.
> ...


Morning was not so great for me. In fact I thought it was hard. Afternoon went better. Bad time management during both sessions. We will see what happens.


----------



## steve1997 (Apr 20, 2010)

I felt that the morning session was straight foward and I left feeling failry confident at lunch. The afternoon exam was more difficult and I had mixed feelings. I had to guess on most of the AASHTO questions as I am not a bridge engineer and am not to familiar with the code. I did however work through a couple of the AASHTO problem just by looking through the code and finding the answers. I am not sure how I did as it is a toss up. I feel like I did well but not sure if it is enough to pass!! I AM PRAYING IT IS!!! LOL I feel that alot of the problems were fairly straight foward and if you had the right references then you could find the answer. A couple questions in the afternoon were tricky and not as straight foward. Like I said AASHTO killed me!!!


----------



## SAMBEAUX (Apr 20, 2010)

I was fairly confident going in but was wrecked by the bridge questions. Don't think the test was really representative of the general knowledge required of a structural engineer. Hopefully, we all did poorly enough to get the curve nice and low...


----------



## DAVE9999 (Apr 30, 2010)

SAMBEAUX said:


> I was fairly confident going in but was wrecked by the bridge questions. Don't think the test was really representative of the general knowledge required of a structural engineer. Hopefully, we all did poorly enough to get the curve nice and low...


I agree with most of the people above, the morning was easier than the afternoon and I had trouble with the AASHTO problems. I feel pretty good about it but still not sure if it was enough to pass. 2nd time taking it for me so that helped as far as knowing more of what to expect. I also feel i managed my time better, if I didn't know how to do a problem I moved on quickly hoping I would have time to go back and do those problems later. I didn't have much time at the end so I had to guess on a lot of the ones i wasn't sure about (mainly the bridge problems).


----------

