$240 for AASHTO PE Exam Edition

[McEngr]

I don't know for sure if I will ever run across a major highway bridge in practice, I find it rather cumbersome to read through a 7" thick book of exam material. I just received the AASHTO 2004 with 2008 revisions yesterday in the mail and after I saw the box it was in I thought my wife had literally bought a suitcase. Has anyone had a plan of action that has worked for them in regards to studying this behemoth? I plan to make a serious calendar of what to study, but I feel that I might get lost in the pages upon pages of AASHTO.

Last time I took the PE, I purchased the 17th edition and it was useful for a few projects, but this is getting overwhelming!

 

[colostructural]

If you plan on taking the April exam you are going to be putting in some late nights to get a good handle on it . I used to be a buildings guy, but I dabbled in bridge design in a previous life. Not sure if it helps, but I mainly focused on Chps 3 thru 6. Chp 3 has all your load cases and loading requirements, chap 4 is all your analysis requirements (incl wind and seismic), chap 5 is all concrete design and chap 6 is all steel. Focus on the differences between ACI, AISC and AASHTO, since those damn phi factors and clearances seems to trip me up almost constantly. I have yet to see any study material or review course pdfs showing any AASHTO foundation, wood, aluminum etc design examples. I have gone through a ton of review notes, extremely lame review courses (seriously - they charge $1200 for these courses...pathetic) and the new NCEES example test and they all mainly focus on basic gravity, wind and seismic applications using concrete (prestress, CIP, precast) and steel (composite) materials. Hope this helps.

 

[McEngr]

If you plan on taking the April exam you are going to be putting in some late nights to get a good handle on it . I used to be a buildings guy, but I dabbled in bridge design in a previous life. Not sure if it helps, but I mainly focused on Chps 3 thru 6. Chp 3 has all your load cases and loading requirements, chap 4 is all your analysis requirements (incl wind and seismic), chap 5 is all concrete design and chap 6 is all steel. Focus on the differences between ACI, AISC and AASHTO, since those damn phi factors and clearances seems to trip me up almost constantly. I have yet to see any study material or review course pdfs showing any AASHTO foundation, wood, aluminum etc design examples. I have gone through a ton of review notes, extremely lame review courses (seriously - they charge $1200 for these courses...pathetic) and the new NCEES example test and they all mainly focus on basic gravity, wind and seismic applications using concrete (prestress, CIP, precast) and steel (composite) materials. Hope this helps.

colostructural: thanks for the input! I feel that the process will be duanting and take away from my family time. Something I'm not too excited about. Because I don't have much free time as it is, I plan on taking the exam in April of 2012. I want to take as much time to study as I can. This test is expensive and I've learned my lesson from wasting money thinking I'm smart enough (I took the SE II and passed, took the SE III twice and never seriously studied). Smarts will only get you so far. Agree?

 

[colostructural]

I was shooting to get my SE in CA about 2 years ago. A friend of mine in CA has his ear pretty close to the licensing board out there and he warned me that a change was coming and that I might get "trapped" if I started on the SE II and SE III path. He basically forced me to wait; and in the meanwhile I got married (which definitely takes a lot of time ) and went from commercial high-rise structures to waste water and power infrastructure. I thought it was a good move at the time due to the housing mess...joke was on me I guess...since almost everything is suffering now. The past 2 month slow down in work has been a double edged sword for me, on one hand I have plenty of time to study and on the other hand my personal client base and projects at my 'real' job dried up into crispy ball of dung along with my paycheck. I read somewhere (I am sure in one of these damn review books), that in order to truly get a good amount of studying in for the SE you should shoot for a minimum of 300 hours of study time before the exam. I started studying for this about 8 months ago. When I was extremely busy I just made sure to set aside 8 hours a week (extremely early weekends - 3 to 4 hours a day). Now that we have slowed down I have been hitting about 15-20 hours a week of studying (my sanity definitely has suffered). For each subject (Wind, Seismic, Steel, Concrete, Wood, CMU, Cold Formed, AASHTO) I set aside a full month. I think if you could do something similar, your personal life won't become complete hell, and the studying wouldn't be such a time suck. Then again, I freely chose this career path, so what do I know?!!

 

[*Ananda*]

I plan on taking the exam in April of 2012. I want to take as much time to study as I can.

Have you checked with NCEES to see if that AASHTO book will still be the reference in April 2012? For some reason, I thought I read somewhere that after the 2011 exams they will update to new codes but I could be wrong...

Anyway, I got the SERM 5th edition mostly for use as an AASHTO aid, and it seems OK. We'll see if my no study of the AASHTO code works out after I get my results in July (or whenever). I do plan to bring the monster to have the option to look up any multiple choice AASHTO questions if time permits.

 

[lhpriest]

I spoke with NCEES before ordering the monster code. The person I spoke to did mention that the next round of exams (I think starting in October 2011) will be using a newer version of AASHTO.

For me, this means that not passing is not an option. I certainly will not spend another $240 on a newer version of AASHTO.

 

[McEngr]

I spoke with NCEES before ordering the monster code. The person I spoke to did mention that the next round of exams (I think starting in October 2011) will be using a newer version of AASHTO.
For me, this means that not passing is not an option. I certainly will not spend another $240 on a newer version of AASHTO.

I think they would simply provide another 2010 interim revisions, correct? If so, it would be significantly cheaper I think.