EET Seismic Exam Preparation - Time Management

[MarylandPE]

Dear all,

I'm currently studying EET on-demand webinars (now called AEI) with the Fundamentals of Seismic Analysis and Design of Buildings textbook by M.Ibrahim. As time management is critical for this exam, I wanted to ask those who used this book and the associated binder (including the summary sheets and other documents), and how they organized their binder vs their book (with tabs or similar) in order to minimize the time spent looking for a specific topic and/or definition or formula. Any input/tip would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[phirra]

Hello Maryland,

I dont have answers for your questions but just wanted to know how is EET course so far going for your? Is it good?

I just passed NCEES PE and this would be my next step.

I am confused between Heiner and EET. 

 

[thebruce44]

I did not use this specific book (I used Hiner and Mansour) but I can still offer some advise that will hopefully help you.

The first time I took this test I went in with the Hiner and Mansour workbooks having a ton of tabs in them. For every question I needed an equation on, I would have to navigate to that page in the book. I was struggling to finish practice exams in time this way, and I was not able to finish the test in time. I thought I did alright, but in the end I did not pass.

The second time I took the test I took Hiner's class where he sends you a cheat sheet of formulas. I printed them out 2 to a page, double sided, and had a ton of notes in the margins. I photocopied my most used tables and pages from the book and had everything spiral bound at a FedEx/Kinkos. I used that booklet with all practice tests so I knew where everything was, and I managed to finish the test with 5 minutes to spare, which meant I was able to go back and get an additional question I had flagged and check a few other things over. I think I only opened the Hiner workbook once to get a formula and a couple other times for conceptual questions. Even if it saved me 15 or 20 seconds on half of the problems, this time savings give you a huge advantage.

Hope that helps.

 

[MarylandPE]

Hello Maryland,

I dont have answers for your questions but just wanted to know how is EET course so far going for your? Is it good?

I just passed NCEES PE and this would be my next step.

I am confused between Heiner and EET. 

Hello,

I think EET (which is actually AEI now) is pretty good. For someone who had zero knowledge in structural like me, things are well organized and on-demand webinars are really useful. So far so good, but I'll have a better idea once I take the exam.

 

[MarylandPE]

I did not use this specific book (I used Hiner and Mansour) but I can still offer some advise that will hopefully help you.

The first time I took this test I went in with the Hiner and Mansour workbooks having a ton of tabs in them. For every question I needed an equation on, I would have to navigate to that page in the book. I was struggling to finish practice exams in time this way, and I was not able to finish the test in time. I thought I did alright, but in the end I did not pass.

The second time I took the test I took Hiner's class where he sends you a cheat sheet of formulas. I printed them out 2 to a page, double sided, and had a ton of notes in the margins. I photocopied my most used tables and pages from the book and had everything spiral bound at a FedEx/Kinkos. I used that booklet with all practice tests so I knew where everything was, and I managed to finish the test with 5 minutes to spare, which meant I was able to go back and get an additional question I had flagged and check a few other things over. I think I only opened the Hiner workbook once to get a formula and a couple other times for conceptual questions. Even if it saved me 15 or 20 seconds on half of the problems, this time savings give you a huge advantage.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for sharing this. 

 

[Kiosade]

As I went through the EET on-demand course from Oct to early Dec just last year, I noticed he left out seemingly important formulas and ideas from the cheat sheets. And he'd often show examples and slides and tell you to "take a screenshot/copy it down". So i'd draw/write anything not already on the cheat sheets on the back of the relevant page, or in the margins/blank areas on the front if I could. Once I got through the entire course, I took a day to organize it for the test. I scanned everything to make a PDF on my computer (had to do one time for the fronts, and another for the backs), and put everything in the right order. I then printed them front and back on 8.5"x14" paper, which let me have extra blank space to then spiral bound the notes, as I had written in the margins and didn't want to lose those notes. 

Once it was bound and I was happy with it, I spent a good chunk of another day to go through it all and note 2 to 3 major topics on each page. As I went, I wrote these topics on little colorful tabs, and stuck them to the pages. For the most part, this worked great, and I made sure to write the same 2-3 topics on both the front and backsides of each tab so I could see it no matter what page I had opened at any given time. 

I recommend making a separate small binder to put all those R-Value/Omega/Cd tables in, as well as the other relevant ASCE 7-10 pages(or whatever the new one is going to be for the next exam, I know they just changed it). I also stuck the 5.3/5.4 and 6.1/6.2 tables in there at the end for easy access. You REALLY don't want these things to be in the same binder as the cheat sheets, as you often need to look at both at the same time or in quick succession. 

Good luck with your exam!

 

[MarylandPE]

As I went through the EET on-demand course from Oct to early Dec just last year, I noticed he left out seemingly important formulas and ideas from the cheat sheets. And he'd often show examples and slides and tell you to "take a screenshot/copy it down". So i'd draw/write anything not already on the cheat sheets on the back of the relevant page, or in the margins/blank areas on the front if I could. Once I got through the entire course, I took a day to organize it for the test. I scanned everything to make a PDF on my computer (had to do one time for the fronts, and another for the backs), and put everything in the right order. I then printed them front and back on 8.5"x14" paper, which let me have extra blank space to then spiral bound the notes, as I had written in the margins and didn't want to lose those notes. 

Once it was bound and I was happy with it, I spent a good chunk of another day to go through it all and note 2 to 3 major topics on each page. As I went, I wrote these topics on little colorful tabs, and stuck them to the pages. For the most part, this worked great, and I made sure to write the same 2-3 topics on both the front and backsides of each tab so I could see it no matter what page I had opened at any given time. 

I recommend making a separate small binder to put all those R-Value/Omega/Cd tables in, as well as the other relevant ASCE 7-10 pages(or whatever the new one is going to be for the next exam, I know they just changed it). I also stuck the 5.3/5.4 and 6.1/6.2 tables in there at the end for easy access. You REALLY don't want these things to be in the same binder as the cheat sheets, as you often need to look at both at the same time or in quick succession. 

Good luck with your exam!

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that anyone relying on the summary/cheat sheets should definitely add to it. I'm doing that, sometimes adding pages of the book that were overlooked. It's just a matter of organizing everything the best way possible I guess. Lots of tabs and not easy to find them sometimes... 

Thank you. 

 

[phirra]

Thank you guys great info here

 

[JPMCL]

The second time I took the test I took Hiner's class where he sends you a cheat sheet of formulas. I printed them out 2 to a page, double sided, and had a ton of notes in the margins. I photocopied my most used tables and pages from the book and had everything spiral bound at a FedEx/Kinkos. I used that booklet with all practice tests so I knew where everything was, and I managed to finish the test with 5 minutes to spare, which meant I was able to go back and get an additional question I had flagged and check a few other things over. I think I only opened the Hiner workbook once to get a formula and a couple other times for conceptual questions. Even if it saved me 15 or 20 seconds on half of the problems, this time savings give you a huge advantage.

I totally agree, I made my own "cheat booklet" where I included all the formulas, tables and my key notes to tables and formulas, and also noted there the Heiner's book page number, so I could go straight to that page in case needed something else related to the formula.  Of course I took the codes and books with also, but my "cheat booklet" was enough.

Another time saver tip is to try to solve the problems straight in your calculator instead of writing it on paper and then in the calculator, in that same time you can solve it twice in the calculator and crosscheck.

Best of luck!