Everything you wanted to know about the CA-Survey/Seismic Civil PE Exams

Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum

Help Support Professional Engineer & PE Exam Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Does it matter which exam you take first, seismic or surveying?

Do you have to take these two exams in the same day/quarter? Or can they be a quarter apart?
 
First and foremost, never schedule your test for the 3rd month of the quarter. They only release results after each month is completed (typically 7-11 days after but sometimes as late as 18). You can only re-apply after you fail and you must reapply before the beginning of the next quarter. So if you take a test at the end of the quarter, you will miss the next quarter if you fail. Really dumb. IMO taking both exams in the same quarter is too much- just me, but then i never took surveying nor seismic in college (i was ME). BTW, i just passed my last exam. Of course if you are super smart, a good test taker, and work in surveying or seismic design, then you will have a big lead. I had a co-worker who did lots of surveying and passed 1st time with minimal prep. I passed seismic first time using Hiner which i highly recommend but fail surveying twice. I recommend Reza’s course with the videos- not just the work book. I found seismic easier than surveying. Surveying came down to time management as well as knowing traversing, slopes, areas, and the major curve formulas without looking up the formulas- you just have to do lots of test q’s, understand in your sleep and how angles are calculated from bearings- then you should be pretty good. Do practice timed exams too. Hope this is not too much- I wish I had all of this consolidated when I started out.
 
Last edited:
I just passed both on my first attempt, and I thought I would share a few thoughts. I used Hiner's review course for Seismic and CPESR for Surveying, I recommend both, especially Hiner's workbook and quick reference sheets. I also bought an additional three practice exams from AEI, which included Dr. Ibrahim's review video and quick reference sheets. I thought AEI's reference sheets were a little more polished than Hiner's, but they did not have anything as useful as Hiner's colored charts for Sds and Sd1. Both were good. I thought Hiner's practice exams were a little more polished than AEI, but again, both were good.

First of all, speed is the name of the game on both of these exams. Each of these exams are 2.5 hours for 55 questions, or 2.73 min/question. By comparison, the NCEES 8-hr exam is 4 hours with 40 questions for each session, or 6 min/question. This is why practice questions and tests are so important for these exams. When working practice problems for Seismic, I started out by writing my work and extra notes directly into my workbook as I worked the problems, thinking it would be handy to refer back to during the exam. That was before I fully realized the importance of speed, and that I would not have time to be flipping through practice problems during the exam. Sure, a few key notes and important points are fine, but you won't have time to flip through reference material other than looking up a few equations during the exam. In my opinion, it's more important to spend your time making sure you are carefully doing the problems you do know correctly, rather than wasting time looking up problems you don't know (assuming there are only a few you don't know).

Also on the practice exams, you've probably heard that it's good to simulate the exam experience as much as possible - i.e. give yourself 2.5 hours and use only your reference materials. I'll expand on that and say to only use a folded 11x17 sheet of paper, or two letter size sheets of paper (unlined, no graph paper) because this is what you'll get at Prometric. I made the mistake during the first seismic practice exam in the SDR workbook of writing out my work in the workbook, which gave me an unfair advantage of being able to use their figures to sketch on. On the real exam, you'll need to reproduce any figures or sketches on your own scratch paper, so do that during the practice exams as well. I was expecting a pencil at Prometric, but I was given two ball-point pens instead. Not that I would probably waste time erasing a mistake on scratch paper, just scribble it out and start again, but I did practice exams with pen just to simulate that experience as well. I suppose the writing utensil could vary by Prometric location? Hiner mentioned only writing in pen in your reference materials so you couldn't be accused of writing any test material in your books with your Prometric pencil, but I wrote all my notes in pencil in my references anyways. I guess the main tip there is just keep your references away from your scratch paper when writing on your scratch paper, so it doesn't look like you're writing in a reference book.

By now you've undoubtedly seen test strategies such as take a quick pass through the exam solving easy/quick conceptual questions, and categorize the remaining questions as Easy/Medium/Hard, etc. With the time crunch that each of these tests are, multiple passes seemed a little inefficient to me, and I didn't want to waste valuable scratch paper by making lists of questions, so this is how I handled each question:
1 and done. Conceptual or easy calculation (< 2 min) questions that I felt confident in my answer. I answered the question with no need to flag or revisit.
2 – Leave blank and flag. I knew how to do the calculation but it would take more than 2 min, this would be top priority on the next pass. An example of this would be finding center of mass of a structure, or area inside a closed traverse, which I find very easy but time consuming.
3 – Answer and flag. These were conceptual questions that I didn’t know the answer to, or calculations that I wasn’t sure how to do, but I could make an educated guess. I wasn’t sure if it would be worth my time to come back so I just guessed but flagged on the off chance I would have time to flip through a reference or maybe attempt a calculation near the end.
4 – Leave blank with no flag. These were similar to Type #3, but I couldn’t even make an educated guess. These questions were the lowest priority to come back to because I had little chance of more than a wild guess. The only reason I didn’t just guess on the first pass and move on was in case
something else jogged my mind on a different problem or I stumbled upon something in a reference, I wanted to save the wild guess until the end.

Rather than retype it here, I'll just reference my post in a different calculator thread. My main point is to use what you're comfortable with from everyday use, if you do want to upgrade to a TI-89, make sure you use that during all practice problems as well. I also shared a small "trig cheat sheet" I made in another thread.

The last thing I can think of right now is at the end of each exam, there is a 10-question survey. The first nine questions are on the experience at Prometric, but the last question is an opportunity to note any questions that you thought may have had an error or been poorly written. I don't know how likely errors are during the exams, I suppose they are possible as they must change the questions quarterly(?) so it is worth noting any questions you thought may have had an error. Dr. Ibrahim said when they are analyzing the exam, they throw out any question that less than ⅓ of test takers got correct. I believe he said they also throw out any question that less than ⅓ of the “top performers” got correct.
 
Last edited:

I just passed both on my first attempt, and I thought I would share a few thoughts. I used Hiner's review course for Seismic and CPESR for Surveying, I recommend both, especially Hiner's workbook and quick reference sheets. I also bought an additional three practice exams from AEI, which included Dr. Ibrahim's review video and quick reference sheets. I thought AEI's reference sheets were a little more polished than Hiner's, but they did not have anything as useful as Hiner's colored charts for Sds and Sd1. Both were good. I thought Hiner's practice exams were a little more polished than AEI, but again, both were good.

First of all, speed is the name of the game on both of these exams. Each of these exams are 2.5 hours for 55 questions, or 2.73 min/question. By comparison, the NCEES 8-hr exam is 4 hours with 40 questions for each session, or 6 min/question. This is why practice questions and tests are so important for these exams. When working practice problems for Seismic, I started out by writing my work and extra notes directly into my workbook as I worked the problems, thinking it would be handy to refer back to during the exam. That was before I fully realized the importance of speed, and that I would not have time to be flipping through practice problems during the exam. Sure, a few key notes and important points are fine, but you won't have time to flip through reference material other than looking up a few equations during the exam. In my opinion, it's more important to spend your time making sure you are carefully doing the problems you do know correctly, rather than wasting time looking up problems you don't know (assuming there are only a few you don't know).

Also on the practice exams, you've probably heard that it's good to simulate the exam experience as much as possible - i.e. give yourself 2.5 hours and use only your reference materials. I'll expand on that and say to only use a folded 11x17 sheet of paper, or two letter size sheets of paper (unlined, no graph paper) because this is what you'll get at Prometric. I made the mistake during the first seismic practice exam in the SDR workbook of writing out my work in the workbook, which gave me an unfair advantage of being able to use their figures to sketch on. On the real exam, you'll need to reproduce any figures or sketches on your own scratch paper, so do that during the practice exams as well. I was expecting a pencil at Prometric, but I was given two ball-point pens instead. Not that I would probably waste time erasing a mistake on scratch paper, just scribble it out and start again, but I did practice exams with pen just to simulate that experience as well. I suppose the writing utensil could vary by Prometric location? Hiner mentioned only writing in pen in your reference materials so you couldn't be accused of writing any test material in your books with your Prometric pencil, but I wrote all my notes in pencil in my references anyways. I guess the main tip there is just keep your references away from your scratch paper when writing on your scratch paper, so it doesn't look like you're writing in a reference book.

By now you've undoubtedly seen test strategies such as take a quick pass through the exam solving easy/quick conceptual questions, and categorize the remaining questions as Easy/Medium/Hard, etc. With the time crunch that each of these tests are, multiple passes seemed a little inefficient to me so this is the strategy that I settled on: On the first pass through the exam I answered all conceptual questions and computational questions that I felt I could solve in < 2 min. If it was a concept that I wasn't 100% sure of I clicked my best guess but still flagged it. If it was a computation question that I didn't feel was close enough to one of the multiple choice answers, I guessed and flagged. Any questions that I knew how to do but would take me longer than 2 min, I left blank and flagged, those were my first priority to go back to after my first pass. Any questions that I did not know how to do I left blank and did not flag. I knew I didn't want to waste time trying to figure those out until I had answered all of the longest questions I knew how to do, and most likely I would end up just guessing in the last few minutes anyways. It is slightly risky to leave questions blank as you go through, but the navigation pane on the CBT makes it very clear which questions have not been attempted, and the timer alerts you with 15, 10, and 5 minutes remaining. Don't forget to "unflag" any questions you go back to and are satisfied with your answer, that way you are reducing the number of questions to go back to. At the end of my first pass of the Seismic exam I had about 10-12 questions to go back to and nearly an hour left, so I felt great. After the first pass on the Surveying exam I had about 12-14 to go back to, with just over a half hour left, so I didn't feel as good, but was able to get several solid answers, leaving less than 10 complete guesses.

Rather than retype it here, I'll just reference my post in a different calculator thread. My main point is to use what you're comfortable with from everyday use, if you do want to upgrade to a TI-89, make sure you use that during all practice problems as well. I also shared a small "trig cheat sheet" I made in another thread.

The last thing I can think of right now is at the end of each exam, there is a 10-question survey. The first nine questions are on the experience at Prometric, but the last question is an opportunity to note any questions that you thought may have had an error or been poorly written. I don't know how likely errors are during the exams, I suppose they are possible as they must change the questions quarterly(?) so it is worth noting any questions you thought may have had an error. Dr. Ibrahim said when they are analyzing the exam, they throw out any question that less than ⅓ of test takers got correct. I believe he said they also throw out any question that less than ⅓ of the “top performers” got correct.
Thanks for the tips!
 
Last edited:
No. And No.
Thanks! So it does not matter if I take seismic or surveying first.

But does anyone here know the exact amount of time that can lapse between the two exams before it's "too late" and you have to reapply? For example, can I take survey in one quarter and then seismic the next quarter? or even two quarters later?
 
Thanks! So it does not matter if I take seismic or surveying first.

But does anyone here know the exact amount of time that can lapse between the two exams before it's "too late" and you have to reapply? For example, can I take survey in one quarter and then seismic the next quarter? or even two quarters later?
When your application is approved, they give you your Approval To Test (ATT) and you are eligible to take both of the CA specific exams in the quarter following your ATT. If you don't pass both tests in that quarter, you can reapply. Go through the Retest application and when you get your ATT you can take either or both tests again the exams in the following quarter again.

As far as I know, there's no "expiration" on taking the tests, but if you decide to take only one test on the first quarter you're allowed to, then you will have to reapply to take the second test the following quarter (I think).

I didn't go at the tests in this way because I took my two tests in the first quarter I was allowed. I failed one, then I reapplied and retook the failed test in that second quarter.

Good luck on studying!
 
Hi everyone. If you're getting ready for the survey test, I highly recommend Reza Mahallati. His book was the only source I had for the test, studied less than 2 months and passed on my first try. I have the book for sale. It's the most updated version (spring 2021), tabbed and highlighted (tabs are removable). I have added some notes and questions from other sources. Selling for $80 + Shipping.
DM me if you are interested.

image.jpg
 
Last edited:
How are you supposed to get the building codes (ASCE, IBC, CBC) for the seismic exam? Do we have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy them? You'd think that these codes would be public information.
 
How are you supposed to get the building codes (ASCE, IBC, CBC) for the seismic exam? Do we have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy them? You'd think that these codes would be public information.

The CBC is available for free online on what I think is a legitimate (non-pirate?) site but it is not printer-friendly, hard copies are available for purchase. Unfortunately the ASCE is not free either. The CBC is based on the IBC so you don't need both, if you get only one I would recommend the CBC since it has all the info from the IBC and would govern in the case of any discrepancies. You only need Volume 2 of the CBC.

However, if you purchase a review course such as Hiner's Seismic Design Review, most (but not quite all) of the important information is included in the workbook. There are a few important tables missing from the workbook. I can't speak to the other review courses, EET or AEI, but I would imagine they include a lot of that information in their workbooks as well.
 
How are you supposed to get the building codes (ASCE, IBC, CBC) for the seismic exam? Do we have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy them? You'd think that these codes would be public information.
If you work for a company, see if they will snag a set for you. The issue is that many of the test versions have questions that you need one of the code books for (not many questions, but who wants to throw away free points for simple lookups). When i took my test, i used Hiner's review course and he had what amounted to a priority list of the likely order of importance.

otherwise, check amazon for used copies but make sure you know what edition you need.
 
How are you supposed to get the building codes (ASCE, IBC, CBC) for the seismic exam? Do we have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy them? You'd think that these codes would be public information.
I bought the AEI review manual and used that to study and was my only reference material on the exam and I passed first try. All CBC and ASCE tables and info I needed were summarized nicely in the manual
 
Having taken my first prometric exam yesterday (Seismic) I agree 110% with the Assistant to the RM. If things do go south and there is a "next time" then I will miss the next quarter like was mentioned. The exam and time move fast and its all about strategy and not getting caught up on one problem. All the problems are doable, but some just take time and that is something you do not have much of.

Being a non California resident on the East Coast....can someone explain why surveying is a required test to be licensed in California? I totally understand the seismic one, never understood the other.
 
Having taken my first prometric exam yesterday (Seismic) I agree 110% with the Assistant to the RM. If things do go south and there is a "next time" then I will miss the next quarter like was mentioned. The exam and time move fast and its all about strategy and not getting caught up on one problem. All the problems are doable, but some just take time and that is something you do not have much of.

Being a non California resident on the East Coast....can someone explain why surveying is a required test to be licensed in California? I totally understand the seismic one, never understood the other.
Because the PE Act allows civil engineers to practice some forms of surveying (topographic mapping and staking)...See section 6731.1 in link...and because the PE Act requires it...See section 6755.1(b) in link

https://bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf
 
Having taken my first prometric exam yesterday (Seismic) I agree 110% with the Assistant to the RM. If things do go south and there is a "next time" then I will miss the next quarter like was mentioned. The exam and time move fast and its all about strategy and not getting caught up on one problem. All the problems are doable, but some just take time and that is something you do not have much of.

Being a non California resident on the East Coast....can someone explain why surveying is a required test to be licensed in California? I totally understand the seismic one, never understood the other.
It's goofy.

Frankly I see it as a way to generate money because at least 50% of the test content is archaic and not relevant to modern surveying. I did learn some cool stuff studying for it, but can't say I use any of it. They also wholly omit practical surveying methods used abundantly in California in favor of having geometry problems involving bearings.

The timed aspect is also goofy. Why make people rush? Do we ever rush through work in practice? No, we take our time and do it correctly.

That said, the state requires it so it is what it is.
 
Anyone know how long it takes for the board to respond to the retest applications? I was notified I failed seismic on June 10th and the next day put the retest application in the mail. It’s July 3rd today and have not seen a response. I checked the bank and they cashed the check. That must be a good sign.
 
Mine took nearly a month and a half in the depth of Covid. From sending in my application almost as soon as i found out i failed in mid November, i barely made the cut off for end of December to retest first quarter. I think you really need to take the test in the first month of the quarter to be sure to get retest confirmation for next quarter
 
Anyone know how long it takes for the board to respond to the retest applications? I was notified I failed seismic on June 10th and the next day put the retest application in the mail. It’s July 3rd today and have not seen a response. I checked the bank and they cashed the check. That must be a good sign.
That is a good sign. I think the authorizations to test will come soon.
 
It's goofy.

Frankly I see it as a way to generate money because at least 50% of the test content is archaic and not relevant to modern surveying. I did learn some cool stuff studying for it, but can't say I use any of it. They also wholly omit practical surveying methods used abundantly in California in favor of having geometry problems involving bearings.

The timed aspect is also goofy. Why make people rush? Do we ever rush through work in practice? No, we take our time and do it correctly.

That said, the state requires it so it is what it is.
I'm curious as to when you sat for the CA Engineering Surveying exam that gave you a reason for thinking the content is archaic and what modern surveying methods are not being tested on? I realize that certain technological tools have evolved to the point of almost not needing a person there, or at best case, just needing someone to personally standby so the equipment is not stolen. But how would the Board test someone on being competent to push a button?

GPS? - Can't test civil engineer applicants on the use of GPS because by its very nature, GPS takes into account the figure and shape of the earth's surface...which is land surveying and outside the scope of the surveying authority given to the civil engineers.

Drones? - this is simply photogrammetry using a vehicle with a remote pilot. Board does not test on software/hardware.

Scanners - just topographic surveying and Board doesn't test on software/hardware.

The laws only allow civil engineers to perform construction staking and topographic surveys. Nothing more. When you remove the technological advances mentioned above, what else is there?

I do agree that error analysis does come into play with all these. Assuming you've passed this exam and now licensed/living in California...why not help write better questions by signing up to work on the exams? Link to do that is Wanted: Expert Consultants to Assist with Examination Development - Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists The Board is always looking for more experts to work on the exams.
 
It's goofy.

Frankly I see it as a way to generate money because at least 50% of the test content is archaic and not relevant to modern surveying. I did learn some cool stuff studying for it, but can't say I use any of it. They also wholly omit practical surveying methods used abundantly in California in favor of having geometry problems involving bearings.

The timed aspect is also goofy. Why make people rush? Do we ever rush through work in practice? No, we take our time and do it correctly.

That said, the state requires it so it is what it is.
I agree on the timing. I got really good at learning how to take that test- not surveying. If it was really important, they should have a practical where you had to do an actual traverse, and calculate something. The logistics of this seem hard however but the process of applying and getting your license is so archaic. I now have my license and see it as a form of hazing- although if you can get through the process does mean that you are detailed enough to design/build something or have enough sense not to if you are unsure. My two cents. An archaic application process to say the least in this era of docusign, paypal, etc.
 
Back
Top