John QPE
Straight Outta Compton
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2012
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- This is very important. The very first step. Do not skip this step. Enroll in the EET review course. Enroll in the AM and the PM. Do not proceed to the other steps until you do this. If you want to make this process as painless as possible, do not skip this step. Very important. Don't bother looking at other courses. This is the one you want to take. The course is less than $1K, and they take PayPal. Open a Paypal credit account with no interest for 6 months and pay it off over the 6 months if you need to. Better yet, have your work pay for it. This is a small investment in your future. My AM class had 28 students, and my PM 11. Emails or phone calls were answered immediately or returned within 2 hours. You just can not beat the advantage you will have on exam day after taking the EET review. I honestly don't think it is fair. 90% of the exam came directly out of their class notes.
- Find a study partner. If you're like me, and have no one close taking the exam, find a partner here on EB.com or through your EET class. Get phone numbers and emails, and use them. Daily. Ask each other questions. No matter how basic or trivial. This was invaluable. Our EET class setup a google group, so the entire class could bounce stuff off each other all week. I highly recommend you doing this with your EET class as well.
- Green Book, MUTCD, HCM ... these will be your lifeline over the next couple months. Try to get a hold of these early on, before your EET course begins. Especially if you are not a pure Transportation guy/gal. Get familiar with the NCEES outline, and where these topics fall in these references. If you have any questions before your course begins, ask them here.
- HSM - your guess is as good as mine. I had it and didn't use it. I tried to use it, but it is massive. I still to this day can't find the answer to the problem that "may" be from this text. Maybe this topic gets refined a little more over the next couple exams.
- Paving books - Just go from your EET notes, don't buy them unless you have extra cash. I never opened them.
- CERM - I used it for 1 question in the AM. That's it. I would probably have this regardless.
- All In One - One AM problem came straight out of this text, so yeah .... I'm glad I had it.
- I had Dr Freibold (sp?) Civil and WRE Dictionary with me, but I did not use it.
- Concrete Pipe Design Manual - This is a free download, print it and bind it. So many useful tables, charts, nomos .... you don't want to be calculating pipe area and hydraulic radius, you just want it from the table. All your culvert nomos and Mannings nomos are in here. Plus it's free, and you're an engineer, you should already have this.
- Principles and Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis - Mannering and Washburn .... I bought this after a glowing review from a previous test taker. I strongly advise against this book. It is not written with the PE in mind, and is way too theoretical for what you need to be studying. Not to mention, there are no answers given for the end of chapter problems. You're never going to know if you did the problem right or not.
- NCEES Practice Exams - Yes, you need these. Get the old ones, get the new ones .... get them all. Refer to these problems when you're having a bad day. When you just cant grasp a concept or your struggling late at night and you feel you'll never pass. That is when you do a few of these problems. Before you ask .... YES! The exam really is as easy as the problems in this book.
- 6MS - These are a little harder than the exam but you need these.
- Time - I'll say I have 600+ hours going back a year, but you certainly don't need that. I must have spent 50 hours just highlighting and tabbing the CERM, going through what a co-worker had tabbed and highlighted in hers from her exam. See above, I only used this once. I had about 100 hours in EET class, and a solid 10-15 every week at work, spread out across lunch breaks or early mornings. I was over prepared. But that's not a bad thing, is it?
- UPDATED: I forgot to comment on the Mansour book. I had this, and used it a lot before the EET class began. I didn't use it much after. If you are going to try to attempt this on your own (see #1), this book would probably be a good source to have. It has most of the Green Book tables summarized, provides good explanations and practice problems to work. If you are going to take the EET class, I wouldn't bother.
My degree is in Land Planning, I do not have an engineering degree. I have never done anything with structures or soils. I work in Land Development and do pretty much only stormwater management and erosion and sediment control. I've designed miles of road, but have no experience with the HCM and those traffic engineering concepts. I have 3 little kids at home and 2 dogs. If I can do this, you can too. Just commit to it. Tell yourself 1 and done. But most importantly, see Rule #1 above.
Best of luck!
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