I was fortunate enough to pass the exam on my first try this fall, but I don’t make any illusions that I aced it.
Adding on to what other people have said, I highly recommend both the EET morning and afternoon courses. I took both, and ended up primarily using the binders from their course for my reference material during the exam (besides the obvious such as the steel manual, etc.). When I first started studying, I looked at the CERM and came to the conclusion that it was ridiculously large, and I was never going to commit to actually reading it. I feel like the EET binders is the CERM book with the useless stuff cut out. I would still bring the CERM to the exam since you can use the appendix to look up concept/definition type questions. I think I looked up 2-3 questions from the CERM.
When I studied, I made sure I had a firm understanding of the basics for each subject on the exam. For example, in geotech I studied soil properties, phase relationship problems, etc. I didn’t cover topics like liquefaction, because it would have taken too long. For the more advanced topics that aren’t in my field, I glanced over how the problems were done in the EET binder, and left it at that. I think it’s more important to be strong in the fundamental concepts and problems for each area, than to concentrate on learning every detail about all the subject topics. No matter how much you study, you will come across a few questions you don’t know on the exam. Think about those questions, make a best case judgment guess, and move on.
For the afternoon section, I recommend knowing how to use the codes quickly. For example, if you’re calculating the wind pressure at a 30 ft height, how are your references organized to do this? If you’re actually flipping to ASCE 7-10 and trying to read their wind load equation, this is wasting too much time. You should already have the wind load equation laid out somewhere else where it’s not surrounded by paragraphs of code, and you can quickly see the terms you need. From there if you know where the wind load tables are in 7-10, or have them tabbed, the problem becomes plug and chug. Same goes for seismic, snow, etc.
For steel design, know how to use the design tables. Most problems that can be solved in 6 minuets will most likely be able to be solved using a table. A lot of P.E. practice problems are unnessarily complicated. For example, calculate the bending capacity of a beam with Fy = 39 ksi and Fu = 44.7 ksi that’s 60 ft long where LTB governs. This problem would take forever to solve since a table couldn’t be used, and is not a reasonable expectation of what can be solved in 6 minuets. If the problem can’t be solved using a table, assumptions are probably provided to cut the problem down to a reasonable amount of time.
For concrete, I think going back and understanding your concrete class from college should suffice. Again, I would stick with the basics and think about what could be asked for a 6 minute problem. Is it more likely you’re going to see a problem where the moment capacity boils down to Mn = As*Fy*(d - a/2), or that the beam is going to be doubly or over reinforced?
Prestressed concrete problems come and go throughout the years on the PE. Being that prestressed Concrete is a very specialized field, I can’t imagine that anything more difficult than what was in the NCEES practice exam would be asked.
If you don’t know wood design already, take some time and learn how to do basic beam and column problems. If you know how to do this and have the NDS tables, these problems are like free points. It’s literally looking up a bunch of coefficients. Masonry design usn’t my specialty, but I learned how to do simple problems, and was able to solve some questions on the exam. I relied on the notes and videos from EET for studying masonry.
For AASHTO, well I didn’t study it, so I don’t have any good advice. I will say if I was a bridge person, I would be very salty about the PE exam. The exam is very biased towards the building side of things.
For structural analysis, you should feel comfortable with the fundamentals, i.e. shear and moment diagrams, trusses, etc. Know how to do superposition for moment, deflections, etc. Most of your studying should be focused on statically determinate beams. Opinions will vary in this, but I think devoting a large amount of effort to indeterminate structures, virtual work, conjugate beam, etc. is a waste of time. I would like to hear from people on this board, what virtual work or conjugate beam problem have you solved in 6 minuets? Be comfortable with the shear and moment diagrams in the steel manual.
Something that I think is underestimated in study material is strength of materials. Know your Mc/I, VQ/It, etc. I also recommended bringing a strength of materials book with you to the exam.
Don’t skimp on bringing references to the exam. I brought every reference on the NCEES list except AASHTO and some really obscure references like AWS. Some questions are find the topic in the appendix, locate the section, answer the questions. In other look up questions, NCEES must assume that everyone in the exam room was a part of the specific committee that was responsible for writing subpart F of paragraph I of section K of table D of Appendix C of section 20.3.4.5.6.1.3.4. This is one gripe I have with the code look up questions, there are ways to test that someone can interpret a code book and has a high school level reading comprehension without asking for the most obscure detail of a code that is only passed down as a family secret through 5 generations to distinguish between exam answers. In addition, and then I’ll stop my rant, it is irresponsible to give the impression that an engineer should only spend 6 minuets interpreting a code book for a specific provision.
When taking the exam, I labeled the problems in order of difficulty from 1 - 3 and solved them accordingly. This should take 2 - 3 minuets at the beginning of the exam, don’t panic, it pays off. Sometimes, I would rank a problem as 2 or 3 even if I knew how to solve it, if I thought the problem was going to take a long time. If I had the exam to do over again, I would have written down the numbers for more intermediate steps for each problem. I know I have a tendency to want to plug everything into one equation in my calculator, but this is a mistake. If you write down intermediate steps, you can check your work. Also, if you get stumped on a problem and have to come back to it, the calculations are written down.
Finally, don’t give up on any of the problems. Some problems that you don’t initially know how to solve can be done with a little intuitive logic. For example, what is the reaction force on a 20 ft simply supported beam with a 10 kip point load in the middle? Let’s say you didn’t know how to solve for reaction forces; which would be really scary. Common sense tells you that half the load has to go to each side, so the answer is 5 kips. While this is an oversimplified problem, this line of thinking is how you can approach certain problems that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to solve.
