I just found out I passed the November surveying exam cycle. I just studied EET book and the practice exams. I used the index they provided so I could find pages/references quickly, but the idea is to be able to do most of the problems without having to use the reference. I mostly used the book for terms and ideas about meridians, photogrammetry, map scales, datums, etc. I've taken it multiple times. I took the Civil PE Surveying Review Course as well but did not find it very helpful at all. I didn't have a lot of time to study either since I have a family and young kids, so it was mostly evenings and weekends when I could. You just have to be really fast with the stuff you know: triangles, traverses, vertical curves, horizontal curves, leveling, etc. Learn to recognize the information that is provided that is there to help you and that which is aimed to distract. You have to be quick enough to recognize the information presented and what, exactly, they are asking for in the problem. I also had some surveying programs in the HP 35s that I would highly recommend to speed up curve problems and solve trig and triangles fairly quickly. My other calculator was a TI - graphing calculator which I used to keep track of numbers and convert between degrees and degree, minutes, seconds (DMS) which proved to be extremely time saving since you basically have to do that on just about every problem. It's really not a fight against the material, since it's not inherently difficult, but it's a race against the clock! Honestly, if this exam were 30 minutes longer I think a lot more people would pass it on their 1st try.
