October 2012 SE Study Schedule

[Chosen One]

With the exams being about 3 1/2 months away, who has started studying?

Personally, I am gathering my materials and plan to start this weekend. I only have the Lateral portion to go and this will be my 2nd attempt. I did pretty good on my 1st attempt last October (figured I scored ~60%) so I have a good baseline to use.

I am taking the Live Kaplan Lateral Review course towards the end of August, so before that takes place I plan to go through SEAOC Volume 1, SERM Lateral Chapters, ACI Seismic Chapters, AISC Siesmic Design Manual,and the IBC and ASCE wind and seismic chapters. Once I get through that I'll narrow down topics and start doing lots and lots of problems during the last (2) months.

Anyone else care to share their strategy on how they will prepare? I enjoyed reading McEngr and dakota_79's posts this past spring about topics they were studying and it's nice to see others having similar questions. I presume they won't be around as much since they both passed :wave2: .

 

[dakota_79]

Thanks, C! Sounds like you've got a solid plan, I'm sure you'll get over that final hump this fall. The SEAOC V1 will take you just about clause by clause through ASCE7 Ch 12, and you'll find it really helpful for thoroughly understanding that chapter's minutia. That, plus know the fundamentals of seismic detailing for the 4 materials and you'll have a fighting chance.

One kind of oddball tip, if not for you then to just throw out there: I have no experience with wood framing, either engineering or in the "real world", and had a tough time visualizing load paths in various situations, and especially with being able to sketch up non-idiotic details like the sample exams and sample problems ask you to do. I found flipping through Simpson's fatty wood connectors catalog (free: http://www.strongtie.com/literature/c-2011.html ) to be really helpful for getting up to speed there. They have really clear 3D sketches for just about every load path detail imaginable in there. Just spending an hour skimming that thing I felt took me from a 0 to a 5 on a 0-10 scale for understanding wood load paths.

 

[Bombo_Buster]

Few more sugestions:

1) You might have done it in the past, but go again through the NCEES sample questions.

2) Get familiar with ASHTO 2010, as it is a significant portion of the morning lateral exam.

3) Masonry and concrete shear walls design examples

4) Design of diaphragms, chords and collector problems - Use NCSEA / ICC "Guide to the Design of Diaphragms, Chords and Collectors"

5) Have a binder with various structural details, specially connections, for all materials. Seismic Detailing of Concrete Buildings (PCA) reference book is priceless.

 

[kevo_55]

If you're taking the Kaplan class I'd recommend getting a few of their SE study books as well. They sure helped me in my studying.

Then again, this is comming from someone who never took the new SE exam.

 

[McEngr]

I think studying the SEAOC Volume III and the main structural engineering problems and solutions book by Kaplan was the most helpful for the 2-day test. Laying out diaphragm and collector load diagrams was useful from the Kaplan book. I used Sue Frey's ASD masonry design examples for the test. Many, if not most, masonry example problems you'll find are LRFD which isn't allowed unless you are designing a slender wall (you will most likely have to design a slender wall on the test).

Other things to take away from the test are that the horizontal distribution and vertical distribution of forces is important and can be brushed upon in the SEAOC Volume I manual quite easily. You'll likely have a problem asking for the torsional moment capacity of a 3 or 4 shearwall building level.

The thing that also helped me the most was preparing an excel spreadsheet template from microsoft.com and tailoring it to the percentage of problems on the test specifications. If there was 20% analysis of determinate/indeterminate structures, I spent 20% of my 3 months of 2 hours a day working on those types of problems. I also would give myself a cushion of about 20% of my total study time at the end to brush up on things that I still didn't feel comfortable with - i.e. irregularities of multi-story/funky-shaped structures with combinations of lateral systems.

 

[dakota_79]

The thing that also helped me the most was preparing an excel spreadsheet template from microsoft.com and tailoring it to the percentage of problems on the test specifications. If there was 20% analysis of determinate/indeterminate structures, I spent 20% of my 3 months of 2 hours a day working on those types of problems.

Nice! I did the exact same thing, except took it a step further and on top of the content weight, weighted each category by reverse level of comfort 0-1 (ie steel for me was 0.2, wood 0.8) and multiplied those 2 weights to come up with a total emphasis weight and portioned out my time from that.

 

[ipswitch]

I think studying the SEAOC Volume III and the main structural engineering problems and solutions book by Kaplan was the most helpful for the 2-day test. Laying out diaphragm and collector load diagrams was useful from the Kaplan book. I used Sue Frey's ASD masonry design examples for the test. Many, if not most, masonry example problems you'll find are LRFD which isn't allowed unless you are designing a slender wall (you will most likely have to design a slender wall on the test).

I remember you saying James Amrhein's was superior to Frey's.

 

[McEngr]

ipswitch,

Amrhein's is superior in regards to having a complete building problem and designing the masonry building from start to finish. Sue Frey's info is superior in regards to isolated scenarios (multiple choice problem) involving out of plane or shearwalls. She goes through every possible scenario:

A wall controlled by overturning. (Hi M, Low P - such as a wall parallel to joists)

A wall controlled by shear. (Hi M, high P - such as a multiple floor wall with floors and wall weight accumulating)

A wall controlled by oop forces. (Vertical reinforcement controlled by oop in lieu of the 0.007 and 0.013 reinforcement ratios from section 1.17)

Please note: this is from memory, so the reinf. ratios might be off...

 

[ipswitch]

You wouldn't happen to know where I could get a copy of the Frey notes, would ya?

 

[McEngr]

If you take the kaplan course, you can get them all.

 

[McEngr]

If you take the kaplan course, you can get them all.

If you take the lateral, you'll get more out of the masonry stuff. Better to take both, but if I had to pick one of the two, it would definitely be the lateral.

 

[Chosen One]

How is everyone's studying going?

I've spent the past few weeks going through wind & seismic loading in the ASCE, SEAOC Vol 1, and other study guides. I've gone through lateral force procedure, vertical & horizontal distribution, diaphragms, irregularities, out of plane forces, drift, and wind loading methods 1 & 2 amongst other things at the rate of about 2 hours per day. I'm starting to get into the seismic detailing of steel and concrete frames which isn't much fun.

 

[bootlegend]

I'm almost through SEAOC Vol I and am going to move into Vol 3 this weekend hopefully. I'm lucky to get an hour a night through the week.

 

[Chosen One]

Is everyone ready? Exam is a little more than 2 weeks away and I feel really good about my preperation this time around. Breaking the exams up has proved to be the best strategy for me. One more week of detailed studying then a week of final review before the big day.

 

[ipswitch]

The big day is coming. I didn't get as much prep time in as I wanted b/c I had to switch jobs throughout September but I did take a mind-numbing review class. Doing practice problems throughout the week.

Good LUCK everyone!