Do I need to buy more PE exam materials, etc 6 min solution 3rd?

[goPE]

I hope everyone have a wonderful holiday season.

I have couple of questions to bother you about the PE civil/Structural exam materials. Now I mainly use Civil Engineering Reference Manual for the PE Exam (CERM11) and Practice Problems for the Civil Engineering PE Exam (CEPP11) for study, last week I got the Six-Minute Solutions for Civil PE Exam Structural Problems (SXCST2), 2rd Edition, Christine A. Subasic, 2005 (only 100 questions w/95 page) from my friend, I look through it and found many questions are really tough to solve in 6 minutes, I want to ask for your kind suggestion about the current exam materials as below,

1. Do you think SXCST3( 3rd Edition Christine A. Subasic, PE, 2008, 120 pages), is very helpful and its questions are in the same levels as NCEES exam (afternoon depth) questions?

2. AISC ASD manual is mainly cited in SXCST2 and I usually use AISC LRFD manual in my daily work, I wonder which method (ASD or LRFD) is suggested in NCEES exam? The SXCST2 looks overdated, do you think I should buy SXCST3?

3. Do you think Civil PE Sample Examination (CESX2) and Structural Depth Reference Manual for the Civil PE Exam (CEST2) are helpful in preparing for exam? These books are on sale on line now. Previously my friend who took his PE exam four yeas ago told me CERM and CEPP and w/ design codes are enough to pass PE civil/Structural exam, but now I’m not confident about it.

I appreciate your help greatly.

Thanks,

 

[RevMen]

For what it's worth, the 6-minute HVAC book was extremely helpful to me in studying for the Mechanical/HVAC exam. After the MERM, that was my most useful study material. I started working the practice problems for MERM and I really hated them, they seemed to be far more complicated than they needed to be. I found the 6-minute problems to be the most similar to what I saw on the exam.

 

[EnvEngineer]

The 6-Minute problems are anything but 6 minute problems, they do force you to go deeper into the material and give you good preperation for what the exam may throw your way. Work the problems, understand the material, time wont be and issue. If you dont fully understand the material, time wont help.

 

[22948251]

Don't worry about the time on the 6-min problems. Time yourself and work the 6-min problems but don't worry if it takes you way longer than that. I studied the Water Res & Envir. and some problems took me 20 min to work through. These problems will help you understand the concepts and problems on the actual exam will seem a lot easier.

PE Oct 2009

Civil (/Water Res & Environ)

1st attempt - Passed

 

[luckattack]

I personally thought the CERM & CEPP had too much information to study and was not worth spending the time. But, keep in mind I did have other reference books and took some classes to review that did have more information. One lesson I did learn is watch the edition. I was studying off of the practice books and spent all night studying the steel portion. I know they changed the steel requirements from my study class and had wasted all night just a few days before the test in frustration trying to figure out why my answers were always wrong. I finally figured out the version I had was base off of the old code. Bottom line, do watch the edition esp with code changes.