How Many Months Should you Study to Pass? We asked our Students that Passed April 2017

[Zach Stone P.E.]

One of the questions I get asked the most from students is:

“Zach, how many Months do I need to study to pass the PE exam?”

Each and every person has their own individual needs based on industry experience, math background, and test taking skills.  This means that it is close to impossible to say exactly how many months you, in particular, would need to study to pass.  But, what I can tell you, is what the successful engineers that DO pass have in common with their studying habits and how long they prepared for.

We polled our April 2017 students and asked: 

“How many Months did you Study for the Electrical PE Exam?” 

Want to see how the successful engineers that passed the PE exam answered?  Take a look at the pie graph below and see if you can guess how many months correspond to each percentage and slice.  You can click on the pie graph when you are ready to see the answer or you can just click on the following link:   Electrical PE Review - What do Successful Engineers that Pass the PE Exam have in Common?

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Knowledge is power.  That's why it's so important to identify what is working as a whole so that we can adopt the study habits that passing engineers share in common to greatly improve our probability of passing the PE exam. Your goal should be to sign up for the PE exam, put in your time studying, pass the exam, and then move on with both your professional and personal life.
Of course, the number of months leading up to the exam doesn’t really matter if you aren’t putting in the hours each week.

So to compare, next week we will be diving deeper and looking at the results of how the total number of hours spent studying per week also affects success rate.
 

See you next week!

Zach Stone, P.E.

 

[trainrider]

If you are trying to juggle work, family or anything else, then I highly recommend more than 4 months. I took 6 months going at a steady pace, 2-3hrs per night weekdays only. About two months leading up to the exam, I was about 4hrs a night  (8pm to midnight) after the kids went to sleep. Best of luck to all.

 

[cos90]

If you are trying to juggle work, family or anything else, then I highly recommend more than 4 months. I took 6 months going at a steady pace, 2-3hrs per night weekdays only. About two months leading up to the exam, I was about 4hrs a night  (8pm to midnight) after the kids went to sleep. Best of luck to all.

How do you combat burnout? I started early but I'm having trouble keeping on it.

 

[knight1fox3]

How do you combat burnout? I started early but I'm having trouble keeping on it.

Focus on the end goal and what you expect yourself to achieve. :thumbs:

 

[Zach Stone P.E.]

How do you combat burnout? I started early but I'm having trouble keeping on it.

Make a schedule out on a piece of paper then do your best to stick to it and adjust as necessary. 

Personally, I find that w.riting down on a calendar that I can hang up and see every day helps.

For example, say you want to study 12 hours a week split over three days.  Make hang up a study calendar that has 4 hours blocked off on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week. 

Focus on each small chunk, chunk by chunk. Don't think about all the hours that you need to put in, just worry about those 4 hours on Monday that you need to do, do them, then don't think about it until Wednesday. 

Hope this helps. 

Focus on the end goal and what you expect yourself to achieve. :thumbs:

Amen.

If you are trying to juggle work, family or anything else, then I highly recommend more than 4 months. I took 6 months going at a steady pace, 2-3hrs per night weekdays only. About two months leading up to the exam, I was about 4hrs a night  (8pm to midnight) after the kids went to sleep. Best of luck to all.

This is great advice. 

 

[cos90]

I'm not finding the Spin Up practice exams a very constructive use of time.

For example it asks "what voltage class is 13.8kV" 

Low, medium, high, extra high, none of the above (don't get me started on this option)

Well the only place you will find these arbitrary classes is in company literature because they are not standardized AFAIK. 

As an aside I also find the protection zone questions (not in Spin Up) to be equally arbitrary. Most of these questions consider Zone 2 to be "backup" protection, but if you have a fault close in to the remote terminal that's not a backup!! The questions seem to be written from the perspective of some part of the country where there are no reverse looking zones. 

In short I hope the actual PE exam minimizes these questions that are based on regional conventions because they are very discouraging.

 

[trainrider]

How do you combat burnout? I started early but I'm having trouble keeping on it.

If you feel like you are burning out, take a small break. I normally took weekends off, but if I slacked during the week, then I made it up on the weekend. My schedule wasn't perfect, but you need to make it work for you. 

Something I did was print off my google calendar from when I started to the test date, wrote down everything I wanted to cover and gave myself due dates. I work better when I know when things are due. For example,if you wanted to cover Rotating Machines, well I gave myself about a month for that subject, then you would mark it up on the calendar. And so on for each subject... Leave the last month for sample exams under testing conditions. I did about two of those, using NCEES and EE Guide (Graffeo). I did the CI exams as practice questions. 

On my calendar, I gave the most amount of time to the subjects with the most points. NEC, Machines, Trans. usually had a month, while economics, lighting, grounding etc was more like 2-3weeks. 

Give yourself milestones and rewards throughout your schedule. If you finished your subject within the time-frame you allowed, then treat yourself to something nice. Round of golf, six pack by the pool/beach, whatever you want...Hang in there! 

 

[trainrider]

I'm not finding the Spin Up practice exams a very constructive use of time.

For example it asks "what voltage class is 13.8kV" 

Low, medium, high, extra high, none of the above (don't get me started on this option)

Well the only place you will find these arbitrary classes is in company literature because they are not standardized AFAIK. 

As an aside I also find the protection zone questions (not in Spin Up) to be equally arbitrary. Most of these questions consider Zone 2 to be "backup" protection, but if you have a fault close in to the remote terminal that's not a backup!! The questions seem to be written from the perspective of some part of the country where there are no reverse looking zones. 

In short I hope the actual PE exam minimizes these questions that are based on regional conventions because they are very discouraging.

I didn't find Spin up to be worth it. I bought it, but didn't use it in my studies. Resold after exam. It does a poor job and does not reflect exam type questions. IMO.

 

[Ken PE 3.1]

I'm not finding the Spin Up practice exams a very constructive use of time.

For example it asks "what voltage class is 13.8kV" 

Low, medium, high, extra high, none of the above (don't get me started on this option)

Well the only place you will find these arbitrary classes is in company literature because they are not standardized AFAIK. 

As an aside I also find the protection zone questions (not in Spin Up) to be equally arbitrary. Most of these questions consider Zone 2 to be "backup" protection, but if you have a fault close in to the remote terminal that's not a backup!! The questions seem to be written from the perspective of some part of the country where there are no reverse looking zones. 

In short I hope the actual PE exam minimizes these questions that are based on regional conventions because they are very discouraging.

What 'power systems' are you using as a reference? These questions should be in there.

Zone 2 is considered as back-up even tho it will still see a zone 1 fault. 

Zone 1 is typically 85% of the distance and zone 2 is 115% if my memory is correct. If the fault is close to the relaying, the zone 1 relay should be set to trip first with a delay on the zone 2 relaying. Also, if the zone 1 relay fails to trip, the remote end's zone 2 relay will also see the fault which should clear the line from both ends on a zone 2 fault. 

 

[cos90]

What 'power systems' are you using as a reference? These questions should be in there.

Zone 2 is considered as back-up even tho it will still see a zone 1 fault. 

Zone 1 is typically 85% of the distance and zone 2 is 115% if my memory is correct. If the fault is close to the relaying, the zone 1 relay should be set to trip first with a delay on the zone 2 relaying. Also, if the zone 1 relay fails to trip, the remote end's zone 2 relay will also see the fault which should clear the line from both ends on a zone 2 fault. 

I have PSA by Grainger/Stevenson, EoPSA by Stevenson, PSAD by Glover et al.

I find these books too academic for what I need, except EoPSA. 

But I work in this area (protection of transmission) and I think practical implementation is clouding what I need to know for problems in that area.

Here's my main problem currently: I just took a "4 hour" spin up session in 1 hr 30 minutes and got 90%. Why is this a problem? I didn't get much out of it and it made me feel bad I didn't do better because the questions are too straight forward.

Now you may be thinking this is a good place to be, but on the NCEES questions I barely passed. I got 73%. I'd like to boost my margin but I don't know how. I need more NCEES difficulty questions.

For example, I really need to study motors more, but sample questions in this area are difficult to find. 

 

[Ken PE 3.1]

You are never going to find any sample test to satisfy what you are looking for. You need to use the test to learn the theory and concepts. I passed by compiling samples in groups so I could have a reference point during the exam.

Sample tests suck and are full of errors.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[TNPE]

If you're weak in motors, learn the basic operation of each type and then dive into the concepts.  I have preached this before, but I can't stress it enough.  You will be hit harder than a "Tyson in his hayday" uppercut with concepts.  I can almost guarantee with 100% certainty that you will see a few conceptual questions about motors/generators.  It's too easy of a topic for concepts to be quizzed.

I will be more than glad to help with concepts if you need it.  

 

[HotFudge]

If you're weak in motors, learn the basic operation of each type and then dive into the concepts.  I have preached this before, but I can't stress it enough.  You will be hit harder than a "Tyson in his hayday" uppercut with concepts.  I can almost guarantee with 100% certainty that you will see a few conceptual questions about motors/generators.  It's too easy of a topic for concepts to be quizzed.

I will be more than glad to help with concepts if you need it.  

I would like to get information about the concepts

 

[TNPE]

I would like to get information about the concepts

For obvious reasons, I will not give you exam questions, however, I will say this:

Learn how synchronous machines operate.  What does it mean for a machine to be synchronous?  What regulates the speed?  How do you adjust terminal voltage if speed, torque and other parameters are fixed?  How do you go about paralleling generators?  What are some methods for starting synchronous machines?  What about synchronous condensers and how they can operate (unloaded) lagging or leading (a machine acting as capacitor, you ask? Yep, but not a capacitor, just injecting VARS into the system, not consuming them)?  How does this machine "lock-in" to synchronism after starting?  What about if synchronism is lost, what happens?  Speed/torque characteristics?

What about induction machines?  What are the operating principles?  What is slip (positive/negative slip)?  What does it mean if a machine has positive/negative slip?  What about if this machine operated at synchronous speed, what would happen? What are the torque/speed characteristics for the different NEMA class machines? What happens to torque as slip increases/decreases?

I post these as scenarios for what you should investigate for preparation.  I encourage you to work through these and I will answer where you are struggling and need direction.  

 

[TNPE]

Also, a few others:

-Braking

-NEC related concepts (protection, wire sizing, etc.)

-Limiting starting current

-Interpreting nameplate data 

These are more general but deserve at least a cursory review.

 

[HotFudge]

For obvious reasons, I will not give you exam questions, however, I will say this:

Learn how synchronous machines operate.  What does it mean for a machine to be synchronous?  What regulates the speed?  How do you adjust terminal voltage if speed, torque and other parameters are fixed?  How do you go about paralleling generators?  What are some methods for starting synchronous machines?  What about synchronous condensers and how they can operate (unloaded) lagging or leading (a machine acting as capacitor, you ask? Yep, but not a capacitor, just injecting VARS into the system, not consuming them)?  How does this machine "lock-in" to synchronism after starting?  What about if synchronism is lost, what happens?  Speed/torque characteristics?

What about induction machines?  What are the operating principles?  What is slip (positive/negative slip)?  What does it mean if a machine has positive/negative slip?  What about if this machine operated at synchronous speed, what would happen? What are the torque/speed characteristics for the different NEMA class machines? What happens to torque as slip increases/decreases?

I post these as scenarios for what you should investigate for preparation.  I encourage you to work through these and I will answer where you are struggling and need direction.  

Also, a few others:

-Braking

-NEC related concepts (protection, wire sizing, etc.)

-Limiting starting current

-Interpreting nameplate data 

These are more general but deserve at least a cursory review.

I will be taking a deeper dive into said topics conceptually. Thanks! I felt like this past exam, there were alot of conceptual problems that i had to guess on and i would like to build those areas of weakness.

 

[KatyLied P.E.]

Good advice on scheduling so far.  Two things I would add. 

(1) Set stretch goals as far as to how many hours you want to spend a week.  Strive to reach them but if you don't, since they were stretch, you won't feel guilty.

(2) I did not use PSA (Grainger) that much but here's good advice regarding that.  In a lot of textbooks the end-of-chapter problems have the shorter and easier ones at the beginning of the question section.  The average PE problem is six minutes long.  Therefore those shorter problems could be comparable to exam problems.  That's not a lock, and I don't think you'll miss much by not doing them, but they could be helpful.  I've found that PSA has some pretty good transmission line problems.

Please use this advice for good and never for evil.