No Studying

[trussnorris]

I studied maybe 20 hours. One solid day and then an hour here and there for a couple weeks. My degree was in Civil Structural and I took a lot of hydro courses, but I work for a construction company, so I was solid on the structural, construction, and hydraulic components. The rest I just tabbed in the study guide and hoped for the best. It worked, but I'm a decent multiple choice guesser anyways. I really struggled on the environmental and traffic questions.

I took the Civil Construction.

 

[DrPositron]

If you had recently finished graduate school, you could get by with minimal studying...maybe one or two practice tests. I wouldn't try it without taking at least one practice test.

 

[DrPositron]

I took the FE exam a year after school and passed after studying for just one day. I did not have the same hubris for the PE. I gave myself 2 months of studying to prepare. I am fairly certain I passed, we shall see.

Well...did you pass???

 

[oilfieldsteve]

i studied probably 100 hrs total for the petroleum exam this fall and passed w/ an 86 (i'm in texas and they give a score).

i did a 40 hr review course + about 40 hrs studying at nights (as my kids allowed) + 20 hrs on the last 2 weekends trying to simulate taking a test.

my degree is in mechanical, and my primary discipline is drilling engineering (specifically offshore & deepwater), so there was a fair bit of material i had to learn just for the exam around reservoir engineering, and some land-specific production techniques.

i don't see any way someone could take the petroleum exam cold w/ no preparation and pass, but i guess it could happen.

 

[Deflected]

I didn't study and failed. I did very well on the subjects that I knew, but did horrible on the others.

I do structural design work all day, and had no problems with that section. The problem is trying to work problems that you haven't seen for 4 years.

 

[bta15]

I "studied" for approx 16 hours for the test. I didnt want to study at all but my girlfriend nagged me so I opened my CERM book and put it on the floor while watching football for 2 hours a week for 4 weeks. Then the day before the test I did the Trans 6 minute solutions for 8 hours(basically copied all the answers from the back of the book to calc paper).

Passed 1st time. Probably wasn't the best line of studying to take, but I figured the cost of studying 200-300 hours and getting like a 6k raise wasn't a good investment of my time.

 

[Dleg]

Wow. I am envious of all you guys who are already such good engineers you don't need to study, or don't feel it is worth your time.

 

[Titus Barik]

Wow. I am envious of all you guys who are already such good engineers you don't need to study, or don't feel it is worth your time.

Do you think some exams are just easier than others? I did the Computer Engineering exam for instance, and didn't need a calculator. Also, the fact that Computer Engineering has little to no standards means almost no memorization-type problems. You can generally work everything from first principles, even if you don't remember the formulas.

 

[JEre]

I can't speak for other depth sections but I really think if it was possible to pass any of these without studying at all it would be the Civil - Transportation section. I failed it the first time with 40 hours or so total of studying time, that 40 hours was in between a lot of Call of Duty and drinking, so in reality maybe 20 hours of real studying. As I'm writing this i'm thinking that 'real' studying was me just looking at how problems were solved, I didn't even do one problem. So I'm not sure if any of the time I spent can be considered studying..I missed it by about 5 problems...thought I did so much worse.

Second time (October 2010) I went all out with 'real' 200 hours or so of studying/doing problems, thought the Transportation Afternoon was almost a joke which made me feel real good leaving the test....Transporation Depth has A LOT of problems you can solve in 3 seconds by flipping open AASHTO Green Book, HCM or MUTCD manuals.

 

[Dleg]

Personally, I think there is a lot of value in the exercize of studying for the PE exam. The studying itself, not just passing the exam. For many of us, the exam comes later in a career, when re-learning this stuff (or learning for the first time) can make for a re-invigoration of your career. Maybe The Civil transportation exam is narrow enough that, if you work in that field, you aren't learning anything new by studying for it. For the enviro field, studying forced me to learn several subjects that I never had a chance to work on in my professional career. After the exam, I was able to volunteer for many additional tasks in these related subjects that I would have avoided before (air pollution modeling, chemistry, hydrogeology, etc.).

I know that passing the PE is a goal in itself, and for some people who are completely satisfied with their jobs, they may never need any additional skills. These people may be able to strategize a way to pass the exam, more so than learn the material. Personally, I'd rather be working with (and hiring) the types of people who want to learn new material, and not just do the bare minimum to get by.

Still, more power to those who were able to pass without studying, or with very little studying. Everyone is different.

 

[bta15]

Wow. I am envious of all you guys who are already such good engineers you don't need to study, or don't feel it is worth your time.

I don't think that I am a better engineer than anyone on here or that it wasn't worth my time. I was willing to not really study, fail, and then re-evaluate what I needed to study. I didn't stress, didn't lose sleep over it, went in relaxed and passed. It may have been that my guesses were unusually lucky or that I knew more than enough. I didn't walk out feeling that I definitely passed or failed. Many of the other civils I work with took a similar approach on other dpeth sections and passed and many took a very rigorous approach to studying and passed. I think a lot of the people who fail end up failing because they overthink it, get into the testing room and can't function or just freeze up.

Like many of you I am a younger family man. Passing the PE was not going to significantly change my lifestyle. I just valued my time away from work with my family relaxing too much to spend it studying.

I believe if they gave you as long as you want to take the test and made it much more difficult that many of the people who failed would pass and many that passed would fail. The results of the test have a lot to do with its style rather than the quality of engineer that you are.

 

[Titus Barik]

Still, more power to those who were able to pass without studying, or with very little studying. Everyone is different.

One should be careful about making a statement like "pass without studying". Perhaps they didn't need to study because they normally spend their free time reading articles, working problems, and learning new material anyway. Since these types of people are effectively "always studying", there's nothing special that needs to be done for the PE exam.

For example, I was working on my Master's degree while working full time. So while I didn't have time to directly study for the PE (too busy with graduate school and working!), I'm certain that my graduate course work helped me indirectly prepare for the exam anyway. Either that, or some exams are easier than others as I mentioned before.

 

[Titus Barik]

I don't think that I am a better engineer than anyone on here or that it wasn't worth my time. I was willing to not really study, fail, and then re-evaluate what I needed to study. I didn't stress, didn't lose sleep over it, went

I went in much the same way (not because I didn't want to study, but due to personal commitments at the same). Since people hardly talk about the exam in my discipline, I thought I'd use one of my exam chances to do a "trial run". This way, I could figure out what the exam was like, get a diagnostic report (I went in assuming that I would fail), and in this way I would be able to study in a focused way for the April exam.

 

[pugsx]

HiHas anyone ever heard of anyone passing the exam with no studying?

just curious

I passed my GMAT, GRE, FE, and LEEDS Green Assoc. exams with flying colors and never cracked a book. That said, I would not have attempted that on the PE and I don't think I'd have fared well if I'd tried.

You pass LEED without cracking the book? Amazing!

 

[The Man]

Ya I don't believe you passed LEED without studying

 

[pugsx]

Ya I don't believe you passed LEED without studying

I'm not sure about green assoc but when I took version 2.0 for LEED AP, you couldn't use common sense to answer them. Maybe he got extermely lucky at guessing. With that luck, I'd hit Vegas baby!

 

[The Man]

Ya I agree pugs, those questions were rediculous. I personally can't imagine just guessing at code numbers.

 

[1.21gigawatts]

I skimmed through some books until the day before. Then I did practice problems for about 6 hours the day before and tabbed the hell out of a suitcase full of books.

I just found out I passed, so it can be done on very minimal studying if you know thats the type of test taker you are. I found the majority of the problems to be very easy to think through and work out, it was just a matter of how much time it took. I remember I ended up guessing on the last 10 questions of the PM Transportation exam because I ran out of time.

Honestly, if you study hard for a week or two before the exam, and go in with a clear head and try not to panic, it's not all that hard.

and btw I was fully prepared to take a review class if it turned out that I failed..

 

[jsk]

i took the civil-transportation test and passed (the second time) with very little studying.

the first time (april 2010), i studied maybe a total of 20 hours, most of which were spent writing/copying problems from the ncees study book into a notebook and tabbing the resources as i went along. i failed by one "point" or about 4 questions to first go round.

second time (oct 2010), i read through the 6-min solutions for transportation depth and tabbed some more. spent maybe 10 hrs for the second time around. i left the second exam feeling pretty confident (i think it was a lot easier than the april 2010 exam)...

i took and passed the fe in 2005 (4th year of college) and passed with a comfortable margin and minimal studying-- i went through a practice exam the day before the test. i've been a practicing civil engineer since then with most of my work in land development and some transportation design.

i think the key is to know what type of problems will show up and to be familiar with the resources.

 

[21B5S]

I received my Nevada results today in the mail and passed. My studying included tabbing the CERM and maybe 5 practice problems... of which I got 3 wrong.