# Civil PE Exam AM Session



## Rey Villa (Sep 1, 2010)

Can anyone of you provide some insight as to how in depth the AM breath portion of the exam is? I plan on taking the geotech PM depth and have been worrying a bit as far as the difficulty of the AM portion. I am pretty confident I will do well on the geotech PM depth portion since this is my area of expertise.

I have been working on the CERM problems and finding myself thinking that most of these problems are more on the difficult site. Generally I get about a bit more than half of the problems in that practice problem manual correct.

Can anyone share some light on past experiences regarding difficulty of AM portion?

Regards


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## sac_engineer (Sep 1, 2010)

jokerzx12 said:


> Can anyone of you provide some insight as to how in depth the AM breath portion of the exam is? I plan on taking the geotech PM depth and have been worrying a bit as far as the difficulty of the AM portion. I am pretty confident I will do well on the geotech PM depth portion since this is my area of expertise.
> I have been working on the CERM problems and finding myself thinking that most of these problems are more on the difficult site. Generally I get about a bit more than half of the problems in that practice problem manual correct.
> 
> Can anyone share some light on past experiences regarding difficulty of AM portion?
> ...


There have been numerous thread discussing the difficulty of the breadth exam and lots of advice to help you with your inquiry. In a nutshell, I would stay away from CERM for practice problems. There are other sources that would better serve you to prepare for the exam. The All-in-One book by Goswami is an excellent source as well as the 6-minute solution series.

The breadth exam is designed to ensure that you have a fundamental understanding of the different civil engineering topics. You will not be asked to design a bridge or perform a hydraulic model, but you should know how to compute a deflection in a beam and solve for a slope of an open channel given the necessary parameters.

Look at the test plan on the NCEES website to see what you need to cover. Don't get overwhelmed with the material; just know that you need to attain a comfort level so that you're not learning the material during the exam.

Good luck!


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## EnvEngineer (Sep 2, 2010)

The CERM is a good guide to the test, being able to do the more difficult problems will help you tackle anything that they throw at you. Be sure to stick close to the NCEES outline, there are a number of areas in CERM not on the current test. You can get thought the morning with just CERM so make sure you understand all the sections required by NCEES and you will be fine.


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## STEEL MAN (Sep 5, 2010)

sac_engineer said:


> jokerzx12 said:
> 
> 
> > Can anyone of you provide some insight as to how in depth the AM breath portion of the exam is? I plan on taking the geotech PM depth and have been worrying a bit as far as the difficulty of the AM portion. I am pretty confident I will do well on the geotech PM depth portion since this is my area of expertise.
> ...



So what youre saying here is, the PE Civil AM is fundamentals in Civil Engineeering, so it is the same as FE PM Civil Discipline? But you might consider in FE Pm Civil there are 60 probs compared to PE Civil AM is composed of 40 problems, in this case, what I think PE Civil Am is more than fundamentals but not in depth.


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## STEEL MAN (Sep 5, 2010)

STEEL MAN said:


> sac_engineer said:
> 
> 
> > jokerzx12 said:
> ...


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