Passed all 3 first try. Did Civil Water Resources.
8-hr: I only studied the NCEES practice books (3 different years), using CERM and 2-3 other books (Fluids, Hydrology, W/WW Treatment). I used no PPI material other than CERM. Now, all the problems I solved, I "over-solved" and made a nice solution book, where I had CERM and reference text pages noted, key equations, little tidbits, etc. Any topic the problem covered, I searched out in CERM/references info related to it, and made notes to try and give as complete an explanation as possible for the problem. I tabbed and referenced this homemade solution book at least 15 times during the exam.
Seismic - I studied Hiner and used 7-10. I went thru the mc problems in Hiner 3 times, and did the depth problems twice. I had 7-10 tabbed very well, made a "commonly used" section of Hiner/7-10 material at the front of my binder. I had this tabbed very well.
Survey - I studied 120 as my major source. I simply did problems over and over and they slowly settled in. The day before the exam, I did the two Mansour practice exams. I crammed Survey for 10 days after I finished the Seismic and 8-hr exams.
I started studying in January. I have a 2 year old at home and time was tight.
Total breakdown of study hours - 92 hours 8-hr (80 hours in Jan Feb, and 12 hours of review right before the exam), 60 hrs Seismic, all in march and april, and then 30ish hours Survey.
About 20% of my studies was with 2 other candidates which helped, asking questions AND explaining things to them was beneficial.
In October, I took an ASCE review course as my undergrad is not civil engineering, and I wanted exposure to the topics before really beginning my studies in Jan. I felt the course was poor in general, though the structural/seismic guy was good. Survey, construction, were worth little.