If anyone wants or needs help send me a message I'd be happy to help and will share any resources I can.
Construction, was not easy by any means. Based on the questions asked this cycle and the addition of ACI MNL-15 I believe the trend is that it's going to start focusing a lot more on construction codes and trouble shooting, which if you don't deal with everyday can absolutely floor you.
But for now I can tell you that EET far surpasses School of PE, especially in the PM. I really wish I had heard of or taken EET the first time I took the test. Samir is an amazing instructor and acts like a mentor. It's not all him though, you also have to be willing to work hard and grind it out.
Yhe first time I took SoPE I thought I'd be okay if I just worked their problems and ran through their videos constantly. In April I felt prepared for the morning, but the afternoon was a nightmare.
When I failed the first time I took the diagnostic and really looked at where I was weak in and where I was strong in. Then I studied PM-Construction first. I read somewhere that the Construction topics represent 60% of the whole exam. So I was convinced that I needed to master the Construction depth first because then I'd also be more that half way through studying for the am as well. In studying whatever gave me trouble I researched and googled and did practice problems. It was frustrating and sucked but I just had to learn to EMBRACE THE SUCK. I really beat topics to death. If I still felt like I wasn't sure I asked Samir and he explained it without treating you like a dummy.
For example, I was weak in concrete mix designs so I learned to do a mix design from scratch...with Samir's help. Then I did problems and learned different ways they could ask it I learned the long way first then it helped me develop my own short cuts. Same goes for my other weak points equipment productivity, earthwork, and so on.
I also created a log and made it a point to study and log my hours. This helped me focus because then I became obsessed with logging hours and if I had skipped a day I knew if I had to reach my target ours for that week I had to make it up. I logged in 386hrs.
All in all I walked into the room ready to dominate. I also had the flu like the Wednesday before the exam and I felt feverish the night before so I was hopped up on NyQuil and even took 4 DayQuils during the exam day. I knew it was going to suck but I knew I had to stay calm and take it for what it was. During the exam I dissected the exam into three types of questions easy, medium and "wtf is this sh*t" easy ones first, then medium ones then the wtfs. I mark 10 wtfs but then when I read them carefully I realized 6 of them were actually not that bad. Two of them I guess because I had no clue and couldn't find them in my notes. There was this one question I had no clue how to do and I wrote out what I knew and what I need to find, then they tried to pull some sneaky ****ie trap sh*t and I caught them and I literally made me chuckle cause I got the right answer.
For the pm. I did the same thing above. But I felt like the questions were just coming to me easy so half way through I was like "this can't be real". There was one "wtfer" and I read it and was like well this would never really happen in real life but I stuck to what I knew and then bam I got the answer.
Sorry for long rant guys but I was trying to make it short but I couldn't stop typing. Again please feel free to contact me if you need help.
Sorry guys you have to go through this but I'll tell you the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. Chin up! This test does not define you!!