I took all three exams this past October. Passed the 8 hour! Failed the seismic and surveying
Any tips on how I can pass them? I know there is a whole thread on seismic/surveying, but I want to hear from people here who just recently passes.
Thanks.
Firstly, congrats on passing the PE exam!
Now, for my advice...
I self-studied for the seismic and surveying exams, passed seismic on the first try, and surveying on the second. Here's what I did.
For seismic, I will say that it was an advantage for me that I do structural engineering work. Despite that fact, the Seismic Design Review Book by Steven T. Hiner is fantastic. It is organized incredibly well, has good practice problems, and great examples. In fact, I have continued to use this reference in my professional work in general.
For surveying, my first time, I chose to study mostly from PPI books. I do NOT recommend them for the exam itself. I did all of the problems in 120 Solved Civil Surveying Problems for the California Special Civil Engineer Examination. I would NOT say that they are representative questions for the surveying exam. I also read through and highlighted/tabbed the book Surveying Principles for Civil Engineers by Paul A. Cuomo. Basically, that review made me feel comfortable with the material, but it turned out to be pretty much useless for me in the actual exam. The second time around, I studied exclusively from the Civil Surveying Review Workshop manual by Reza Mahallati. I spent a few weeks reading the chapters in this book (tabbing and highlighting as I went along) during my commute. Because I didn't really have the ability to do problems during said commute, I actually crash-studied practice problems from this book (which I don't really recommend, but worked for me) for four days after the PE exam, before I was scheduled to take the surveying exam. I walked out of the exam at the beginning of November feeling really good about it (as opposed to it being a complete shit show back in April), and I passed. It was 100% due to this book for study materials. Sometimes it is hard to follow and not all the steps are explained, but it really has all the information you need for the exam.
Lastly, I cannot stress strongly enough the time crunch you will be under for these exams. Skip and mark ANY problems you do not know RIGHT away. 2.5 hours for 55 problems is much more challenging, time-wise, than 4 hours for 40 problems, in my opinion. There will be complicated problems that you probably won't have time to solve (particularly in the surveying exam), and there may be easier, short problems at the end of both exams that you would much rather get off the bat (having skipped many problems to get there) than get at the end when you are running out of time. I recommend a multiple pass system, where your first pass is questions you can answer immediately or know exactly where to look up, your second pass is quick calculations, and your third pass (and any subsequent passes) are more complicated problems. I also recommend marking but also answering from the get-go any questions where you just have zero idea. That is safeguarding yourself of leaving a question totally blank in the case that you run out of time at the end.
For both exams, do as many practice problems as you can. You may have done this the first time around, but do it again, and consider broadening your reference materials. Now that you don't have the PE Exam to stress about, you can likely devote a lot more time to these specific exams.
Good luck in the spring!
