April 2019 Civil - WRE Results

[john813_PE]

To those who passed WRE, has anyone else had success with prep courses besides EET? I have failed twice now and did EET both times.  I am glad EET has been great for others but something about it just isn't working for me.  TIA

How many practice tests did you do? 

I loaded up on all the Pe Prepared LLC books, Goswami, Gruttadauria, Civil PE Practice and a few other ones. 

I would feel confident doing 5 tests, and then the 6th test would throw me for a whirl as it was topics/style of question I haven't seen in the CERM or the other 5 tests. 

Even found some online PE prep made by a forum member here IIRC, which ended up being overkill, but still gave me some tips on how he solved certain problems. 

What category did you do weak in? 

I even brought a hydeaulics/hydrology textbook that I tabbed to hell which had some good problems to do. 

 

[civilMC]

How many practice tests did you do? 

I loaded up on all the Pe Prepared LLC books, Goswami, Gruttadauria, Civil PE Practice and a few other ones. 

I would feel confident doing 5 tests, and then the 6th test would throw me for a whirl as it was topics/style of question I haven't seen in the CERM or the other 5 tests. 

Even found some online PE prep made by a forum member here IIRC, which ended up being overkill, but still gave me some tips on how he solved certain problems. 

What category did you do weak in? 

I even brought a hydeaulics/hydrology textbook that I tabbed to hell which had some good problems to do. 

I also had all of the PE prepared books this time, as well as the NCEES practice exams and the two EET practice exams.  I created an index of every type of practice problem I had so that i could quickly locate a similar problem.  In all honesty, I totally thought I nailed this round.  I probably did 5-6 practice exams. 

I did a little bit better the second attempt than my first when comparing diagnostics but still not good enough.  I will look into the other books you mentioned.  Didn't do great this round in wastewater, ground water and OCF which I strangely did great at in my first attempt. 

I am starting to think maybe I don't even need to do another practice course. Maybe just some fresh materials and practice exams will help me.  For reference, I got 42/80 last year and 50/80 this year.

 

[john813_PE]

I also had all of the PE prepared books this time, as well as the NCEES practice exams and the two EET practice exams.  I created an index of every type of practice problem I had so that i could quickly locate a similar problem.  In all honesty, I totally thought I nailed this round.  I probably did 5-6 practice exams. 

I did a little bit better the second attempt than my first when comparing diagnostics but still not good enough.  I will look into the other books you mentioned.  Didn't do great this round in wastewater, ground water and OCF which I strangely did great at in my first attempt. 

I am starting to think maybe I don't even need to do another practice course. Maybe just some fresh materials and practice exams will help me.  For reference, I got 42/80 last year and 50/80 this year.

That sounds like a good plan to me. For me that helped a lot, especially when I lost confidence in my review course. 

Just stay away from Six Minute Solutions. Takes six minutes on some problems to copy the answer and decode how they got to a certain step lol. 

 Just be aware Goswammi does have some questions with mistakes, but IIRC I think someone posted some errdata online. 

 

[EI_EI_OH]

That sounds like a good plan to me. For me that helped a lot, especially when I lost confidence in my review course. 

Just stay away from Six Minute Solutions. Takes six minutes on some problems to copy the answer and decode how they got to a certain step lol. 

 Just be aware Goswammi does have some questions with mistakes, but IIRC I think someone posted some errdata online. 

I second the "Six Minute Solutions" being garbage. They just don't match up with the actual exam questions.

 

[FromThisSoil]

Not WRE but Geotech. Passed -2nd attempt!  Highly recommend EET for WRE in particular. Dr. Islam is very helpful and a great guide to get this done.

Took and passed Structural on my second attempt. Took EET AM and passed. H&H was my weakest topic based on the analysis from my first attempt. I really liked Dr. Islam’s approach to teaching. I really think he was one of the best teachers they had on the AM topics.

I honestly think I could pass the Water Resources PE if he taught all the depth stuff...

 

[MspSdf]

I also had all of the PE prepared books this time, as well as the NCEES practice exams and the two EET practice exams.  I created an index of every type of practice problem I had so that i could quickly locate a similar problem.  In all honesty, I totally thought I nailed this round.  I probably did 5-6 practice exams. 

I did a little bit better the second attempt than my first when comparing diagnostics but still not good enough.  I will look into the other books you mentioned.  Didn't do great this round in wastewater, ground water and OCF which I strangely did great at in my first attempt. 

I am starting to think maybe I don't even need to do another practice course. Maybe just some fresh materials and practice exams will help me.  For reference, I got 42/80 last year and 50/80 this year.

Sorry to hear you didn't pass again. What was your AM/PM split? If you don't mind, please post your diagnostic report so we can help you improve your weaknesses.

You improved from 42 to 50 but was it mainly on AM or PM, or 4 each? Without knowing the split, it's hard to find out your weakness so that a test strategy can be developed for October 2019. And you thought you nailed the topics that you did great the first time, but they can ask literally anything that you may not know of. Do not skip and skim through those topics this time around.

 

[CharlieHotel47_CE_WER]

No I agree with you - I felt the afternoon was way heavier on environmental than the practice test or 6-minute solutions. I felt great about the morning, but the afternoon was so much harder than I expected.

I did school of PE for WRE and got a 0 out of 6 on wastewater and 1 out of 6 on water. We had 6 other engineers sign up in the office for the on-demand class and everyone did poorly as well. One girl in my office passed but I wonder if she just got luck. I think the afternoon was super hard. Are practice test the answer? or EET as an alternative study course?

 

[ATDoel]

I did school of PE for WRE and got a 0 out of 6 on wastewater and 1 out of 6 on water. We had 6 other engineers sign up in the office for the on-demand class and everyone did poorly as well. One girl in my office passed but I wonder if she just got luck. I think the afternoon was super hard. Are practice test the answer? or EET as an alternative study course?

you didn't do any practice tests?  I didn't think the wastewater questions were too tricky, if you understood the wastewater questions on the practice exam you should have been able to at least half the ones on the exam.

 

[CharlieHotel47_CE_WER]

you didn't do any practice tests?  I didn't think the wastewater questions were too tricky, if you understood the wastewater questions on the practice exam you should have been able to at least half the ones on the exam.

I did school of PE and the one NCEES practice test book. I guess that wasn't enough. I felt good with the practice problems provided by school of PE but I just didn't know about the ones in the test

 

[Sirian]

@civilMC

I’m thinking you may need a revised approach to testing.

The problem with tabbing similar problems is that it’s easy to spend too much time trying to match problem types for hints on how to solve the specific thing on your desk.

I’ve used that strategy myself, and it’s really only good for 2-3 problems ... and even then, only to check work or after being ‘stuck’ on a problem for a while.

How did you feel about time on the test? Did you execute multiple passes through the problems?

Personally, I took zero full practice tests (investing 8 hours in a simulated environment does nothing but stress me out ... not good).

My first pass through the test on AM and PM was solely me doing ‘problem identification’ and writing down what formulas, references, and topics the question was probably citing. This helped me focus my solving efforts quickly. 20 minutes at the beginning of the test so I never had to return that identification step again!

Feel free to DM me if you want to chat. Test taking strategy is something I also teach, and I can say that it’s very important to evaluate what in your process might also be tripping you up.

Hang in there!