I need help with Lateral...

[Duke]

I'm a buildings guy and am discouraged and feel stuck on the lateral exam, I don't know what my problem is. I passed vertical in April 2019 through self study using PPI's STERM manual, their practice exam, and the NCEES practice exam. I tried the same for lateral in October 2019 and got 27/40 for the morning and IR/IR/IR/U for the afternoon. I then took AEI's lateral course to fill my knowledge gaps and tried again in this last Oct 2020 exam and did worse! 22/40 morning and U/A/U/IR for the afternoon.

I seem to learn best working practice problems and I feel I throughly tabbed my code book and AEI's notes. I have two little kids and work full time so I am stretched thin but I made sure to work through all of the AEI workshops, mini exams, and final exam. I am at a point where I feel competent but am apparently an unable to show it on this exam. I must have a blind spot I am not seeing and I need help and suggestions in how to identify my blind spot and how I should prepare for the next administration.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Andy Lin]

Are you saying that you felt competent before AND after the exam but somehow the results don't reflect that? 

If so then it sounds like you didn't run out of time nor did you get stuck in any particular problem.

In that case you are right there's definitely some blind-spots. I have a couple of ideas. 

Suggestion #1:

For the morning session, look at your exam results and identify the topics that have low scores. Then go through the practice exams and/or practice problems (that you've already done) and find the ones related to these topics. 

Then, share and show your work for these problems to someone else and see if he/she can find any possible issues with the way you are solving these problems.

Suggestion #2:

Similarly, share and show your work for a practice exam afternoon questions and see if another person can identify your "blind spot". 

(I'm actually in the process of trying to see if I can better help se exam takers and I'd be happy to take a look if you up for it. Just shoot me an email or private message.) 

Suggestion #3:

Alternatively, you can review your practice work and compare with the solutions line by line to see if you can find anything odd. 

Also, you should go through the exam specs to see if there's anything that you aren't familiar with (although this doesn't really help for the afternoon session since the topics are so broad...)

Good luck! 

 

[Duke]

I felt competent before the exam but with my result I am not sure, I think that in a professional setting I would be able to successfully execute the material on the exam but having only worked for one firm I guess I can't confidently believe that either.

In the morning I used the AEI method of ranking problems 1-3 according to perceived difficulty and working them easiest to hardest. There were a few 3's in the morning I didn't manage to find a solution to but I walked away I feeling I did much better than a 22/40. In the afternoon the general analysis threw me but I was hoping for an IR which I did not get, I thought the concrete problem was 'wonky' and felt very poorly about it but ended up with an A. The other two I felt ok about but got an IR and a U. 

I didn't feel good about vertical when I passed it so I think I'm a bad judge of my own test performance. I would very much appreciate help and will take you up on it thank you.

 

[psustruct]

I do not even recall what the general Lateral question was.  I got a U.  I had to re-read the concrete one about 5 times to make I understood the requirements and that was the one that was going to decide it for me. I got an IR on that one. 

 

[sol_ring]

I also took the AEI lateral course for this cycle and here are some things I did to enhance my binders in preparation for the exam.

For each topic, I moved all depth problems from mini exams, workshops, practice exam, to the front of the binder and added tabs and an index with brief descriptions of the problem (i.e. shear wall boundary element, MF column reinforcement, etc) for ease of access.

From there, I wanted to map things out a bit more, because as helpful as it is to have worked out problems to study with, even if you underline a few things, once you're in the exam situation staring at a wall of text, it can be difficult to parse out the relevant steps to put in your exam booklet. I think we've all felt that feeling, like looking at a Jenga tower and trying to figure out which block to pull just by looking at it. So, I went through examples and wrote all of the critical steps in red along with code references. I found this particularly helpful with Dr Zayati's examples because I had a harder time following the powerpoint format of the longer depth examples. This helped me on the concrete problem of the exam. It was such a weird problem that I couldn't find a 1 to 1 example in my binder, but I was able to quickly pull out relevant code references from different examples to cobble together an A/IR solution and move on to the next problem.

Finally, I looked through the exam specs and binder examples, and looked through Alan Williams' PE Practice Exam Book to find additional depth problems that weren't covered in the binder. I spent a lot of extra time the week of the exam writing out a couple of additional problems for each topic. This helped me on the steel problem as it just so happened to be one of the extra problems I added to my binder, so that was a great feeling.

 

[cfst]

Luke, don't feel bad. SE exams are very challenging, especially when you have young kids at home and have to work full-time. I took the exams exactly as you did. Here are my thoughts:

1) You spent most of your study time in attending AEI's seminars, so the time left for solving problems by yourself was very limited. Watching the tutors explaining solutions does not mean you can do the same way in the real exam, especially when the exam questions are different from the seminars. The handouts may cover one PM question. What to do with the other three? You still need to read the design codes and other references.

2) AEI's handouts (2500~3000 pages) are of PowerPoint format, i.e. two slides on one page. This makes it very difficult to follow. If in M.S. Word format, 2/3 of the pages can be saved. 

2) You might not have time to read references such as SDM and SEAOC-1. If you have a chance to read SEAOC-1 today, what can you find out with regards to the PM?

3) The vertical force exam in April 2019 was easier than usual. The passing rate was ~ 40%. We were lucky, but that does not happen often.

Take a break during the Christmas holidays. Spend more time next time. Wish you good luck!

 

[Nathan55]

I felt competent before the exam but with my result I am not sure, I think that in a professional setting I would be able to successfully execute the material on the exam but having only worked for one firm I guess I can't confidently believe that either.

In the morning I used the AEI method of ranking problems 1-3 according to perceived difficulty and working them easiest to hardest. There were a few 3's in the morning I didn't manage to find a solution to but I walked away I feeling I did much better than a 22/40. In the afternoon the general analysis threw me but I was hoping for an IR which I did not get, I thought the concrete problem was 'wonky' and felt very poorly about it but ended up with an A. The other two I felt ok about but got an IR and a U. 

I didn't feel good about vertical when I passed it so I think I'm a bad judge of my own test performance. I would very much appreciate help and will take you up on it thank you.

Duke....Let me sing you the song of my people haha...I feel for you 100%. This test has a way of being an exquisite form of psychological torture. The way I see it, there are 5 main components or areas of this test that are crucial:

1. Studying--you have to know the material, in general. This is the "easy" part for lateral. Go through the code.

2. Practice--working problems. The current body of work involves NCEES (generally not useful for afternoon), PPI (slightly more useful for afternoon), and AEI (very useful for morning, afternoon, and everything in between).

3. Timing--When we envision the test, the thing that might surprise test takers most is just the time crunch. It's obscene. Given 15 more minutes on every afternoon problem, I surmise pass rates would improve significantly. I almost feel that if you work NCEES/PPI/AEI essay problems (and have done them before) you should be able to complete them in 40 minutes or less. This is because, just from a test writing standpoint, NCEES is very unlikely to write a test that includes a lateral problem from the NCEES/PPI lateral exams. 

4. Completeness--Can't emphasize this enough, don't miss/skip steps that make it seem like you don't know what you're doing. Imagine a scenario where you need to find "Cs". If you calculate it using one equation and "forget" to check max and min values, it appears like you don't have the knowledge about that subject. It's very easy to skip steps with the time crunch issue. When you're rushing through an essay problem you haven't seen before, that's when these things happen. It's also easier to hide knowledge deficiencies in the morning because they are multiple choice. In the afternoon, not so much. Notice the way the NCEES practice exam is worded...they will ask you a question, but there sort of hidden requirements inside that simple statement. Note lateral problem 804b. It asks for "all nailing requirements for sheathing and framing of a shear wall." When I work this problem, I sometimes just check the shear wall nailing at the edges and boundaries, and completely skip the top and bottom plate nailing requirements. If you specifically asked me for the bottom plate nailing requirements, I would do it...but the wording of the problem obscures some of the things you need to put so your answer is complete.

5. Procedure--Choosing the wrong procedure for a problem torpedoes your essay problem and subsequently your entire test. If you get 40/40 on the morning, and acceptable on 3 essay problems, then select the wrong procedure for a wind/seismic problem...you're almost guaranteed to fail.

Hopefully this helps...both of us.