# of Hours of study & prep

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~150 - 200 hours. Took Dr. Tom's Classroom since my degree is in Chemical and I was taking Mechanical TFS. A lot of similarities shared between the disciplines but there were things I thought Dr. Tom's Classroom helped me prepare for.

Pass on first attempt.

 
Took WRE:

Didn't get seriously into studying until the end of January. 

Started light on the hours to not overwhelm myself at first.

In February probably studied 5-7 hours during the week and 8-10 hours on S&S. Focusing more on the AM.

In March probably studied 7-10 hours during the week and 12-16 hours on S&S. Main focus was PM.

I think in April it was 8 hours a day on the 1st-4th lol. 

Bought a ton of practice tests. Did them multiple times, switching them up so I wouldn't get the correct answer due to memory. Definitely helped me seeing a wide range of questions that could be asked on both AM/PM. 

A week before the exam I bought 3 more AM tests and 2 more PM tests. I'm confident without buying those books and working them out, I may not of passed. 

Read the CERM on topics I knew I needed more help than others. The rest was skimming and highlighting sections that I thought could be relevant. 

Took PPI, and while the teacher was helpful in Q&A sessions, I had a hunch that it was a waste of time to watch the entire session. And in hindsight it was. 

Passed on the first try. 

 
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4 Times

First 3 times were in Transportation PE Civil. 

Last time was in WRE.

1st time - Winged it to see what was on the test. Total 25 hours.

2nd time - Wasn't prepared cause my house flooded. Total 50 hours.

3rd time - Thought I really passed. Took Testmaster and all. 125 hours.

4th time - Tired of the game and went full head on ballistic style. 450 hours. I've solved over 600 problems. I came to the test with 7 binders of my problems, and 3 reference book (CERM, a civil engineering dictionary and Eddy and Metcalf Book) Passed April 2019.
Congratulations! You must be elated.

 
About 190 hours of study. However I did a lot of problems and took  the NCEES, GOSWAMI, and Civil PE practice tests. 

 
I feel like this is kind of a silly question, because it varies per person. In my opinion, study your ass off. Study as many hours as it takes to feel confident about all of the subjects. I took EET and would highly recommend it. They get you on the right path and give you the tools necessary to study the right material, as well as hundreds of practice problems and quizzes. Im not sure how many hours i studied, but I can one thing, say coming out of the exam feeling confident was worth every minute I set at the dining room table with my head in the books.
I 100% agree!! 

 
I studied for approximately 16 hours. 2 hours each weekend for a month prior to the test, then 8 hours the day before the test, no review course. I took the Civil Transportation exam and passed the first try.

6 minute solution FTW.


I studied for approximately 16 hours. 2 hours each weekend for a month prior to the test, then 8 hours the day before the test, no review course. I took the Civil Transportation exam and passed the first try.

6 minute solution FTW.
 
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Took WRE:

Didn't get seriously into studying until the end of January. 

Started light on the hours to not overwhelm myself at first.

In February probably studied 5-7 hours during the week and 8-10 hours on S&S. Focusing more on the AM.

In March probably studied 7-10 hours during the week and 12-16 hours on S&S. Main focus was PM.

I think in April it was 8 hours a day on the 1st-4th lol. 

Bought a ton of practice tests. Did them multiple times, switching them up so I wouldn't get the correct answer due to memory. Definitely helped me seeing a wide range of questions that could be asked on both AM/PM. 

A week before the exam I bought 3 more AM tests and 2 more PM tests. I'm confident without buying those books and working them out, I may not of passed. 

Read the CERM on topics I knew I needed more help than others. The rest was skimming and highlighting sections that I thought could be relevant. 

Took PPI, and while the teacher was helpful in Q&A sessions, I had a hunch that it was a waste of time to watch the entire session. And in hindsight it was. 

Passed on the first try. 
Which exams did you purchase for your simulated exams?

 
250 hours.  500-600 problems.  

Engineering Pro Guides as primary guiding document.

 
mine was around 190 hours but only for 7 weeks. I started late in mid-February.

not to steal any thunder but I have summarized my whole study journey here: 




 
200-ish hours? Took and passed Civil PE Transportation on the first try. I started studying in late December in order to spread out the overall burden, since I already knew there were several weeks when I wouldn't be able to study at all.

I wanted to put everything I had into passing, so I went with EET AM / PM and took every listed reference to the test except Pedestrian Facilities (someone had 'walked off' with it ...). I thought EET prepared me very well for the test, but I also picked it because of the excellent reference binders that came with the course.

Unlike others on the board, I took exactly zero practice tests. All of my time was spent on reviewing concepts, navigating references, and working a few practice problems using reference tables and other resources. I spent a few hours tabbing things to quickly get my bearings in the actual test, but only marked significant chapters or indices rather than specific concepts. My situation is unique, since I have a lot of experience in research, reading, and looking up code trivia.

When you think about it, I believe something like 50-60% of the PE is conceptual questions rather than calculations?

I was already very confident in my ability to quickly solve problems, so I worked mostly on understanding the fastest route to solutions, practicing a few key or confusing concepts, and recognizing/categorizing problems in terms of what reference they were likely to use.

My first pass in each section was solely writing notes about what equation/concept/reference each problem was citing. A few I knew from memory, so I marked those (about five in the AM and five in the PM), then did the next easiest (i.e., simple lookups) another five in the AM and five in the PM, and then did the ones I needed to solve (10 AM and 10 PM), which got me up to roughly 40 correct overall. The remainder were more challenging code trivia with exotic locations and calculations with "traps" (another 10 in the AM and PM). This got me to about 60/80. The last 10 remaining to solve in the AM and PM I felt were more "reaching" or guessing questions, or those with so many steps that they were inefficient to attempt to solve with 100% certainty. I attempted to solve these with at least educated guesses or by eliminating between 1-2 answers.

After the test, I felt no worse than I had during the FE, which I also passed on the first try.

From what I've seen, focusing on understanding easy questions and getting as many of those right as possible is a key to substantially improving scores without unwarranted effort.

EET helped a lot in this case by teaching and reviewing the fundamentals of each section, with an emphasis on problems that were almost certain to appear on the test. Their classes certainly helped me be very efficient in my studying!

 
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Which exams did you purchase for your simulated exams?


I know I have a few more not listed but looking at my Amazon orders:

Pe Prepared (All AM and PM tests offered for WRE) 

Gruttadauria ref manual/ practice exam

Civil Engineering PE Practice Exams: By Civil PE Practice (AM only) 

Goswami exam books. 3 in total I believe. 

Older NCEES Exam prep books. 2004 and I think 2010(2004 only had 20 questions for AM IIRC) 

2014 NCEES practice exam 

 
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Took WRE:

Didn't get seriously into studying until the end of January. 

Started light on the hours to not overwhelm myself at first.

In February probably studied 5-7 hours during the week and 8-10 hours on S&S. Focusing more on the AM.

In March probably studied 7-10 hours during the week and 12-16 hours on S&S. Main focus was PM.

I think in April it was 8 hours a day on the 1st-4th lol. 

Bought a ton of practice tests. Did them multiple times, switching them up so I wouldn't get the correct answer due to memory. Definitely helped me seeing a wide range of questions that could be asked on both AM/PM. 

A week before the exam I bought 3 more AM tests and 2 more PM tests. I'm confident without buying those books and working them out, I may not of passed. 

Read the CERM on topics I knew I needed more help than others. The rest was skimming and highlighting sections that I thought could be relevant. 

Took PPI, and while the teacher was helpful in Q&A sessions, I had a hunch that it was a waste of time to watch the entire session. And in hindsight it was. 

Passed on the first try. 
Where did you purchase the practice test? I did the NCEES and six min solutions but I feel they didn't really help. Failed WRE April 19

 
4 Times

First 3 times were in Transportation PE Civil. 

Last time was in WRE.

1st time - Winged it to see what was on the test. Total 25 hours.

2nd time - Wasn't prepared cause my house flooded. Total 50 hours.

3rd time - Thought I really passed. Took Testmaster and all. 125 hours.

4th time - Tired of the game and went full head on ballistic style. 450 hours. I've solved over 600 problems. I came to the test with 7 binders of my problems, and 3 reference book (CERM, a civil engineering dictionary and Eddy and Metcalf Book) Passed April 2019.
What problems did you use to study? practice test online?

 
What problems did you use to study? practice test online?
I've used the following to study. I also took Testmasters 2018 classroom based course so I used all of their problems. What I did was I rewrote the problems and solve them twice. First time I would put little notes in different color ink telling me to convert or to go to certain equations. 

1. NCEES Practice Exam 1999, 2000, 2011, 2013.

2. Six minute solutions from PPI

3. Handbook of Civil Engineering Calculations by Tyler G. Hicks.

4. CERM 15th edition

I didn't bother taking the first three to the test. If I didn't pull it from the books while studying, it wouldn't be of any help to me in the test as I needed to quickly reference and find them. My own personal binders has a Table of Contents on how to solve the same problems multiple ways. 

After all the studying I had approximately 600 or so problems. After taking this test 4 times, I can honestly say that you have to anticipate studying materials you haven't seen every single time. You would set yourself up for failure if you study what you thought was your weakness and didn't go beyond that. Even though I knew I was strong in Geotechnical morning type questions. I went back and study more for it and found problems I haven't encountered. 

Just make sure you weed out the problems that aren't relevant or up to codes such as Transportation questions from the 1999 NCEES. Don't assume the Depth would carry you. You should load up as much as you can studying for the morning session.

You will get it in the Fall. I promise you. 

 
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So perhaps I can dial back on my schedule. I'm sitting at 419 hours. My husband says it's too much but he's not an engineer. He's comp sci. I've been out of school for 15 years so I'm anxious, if you can't tell. I can definitely adjust it down to 250.
It’s not too much.  Do what you gotta do!!  I’m at 200 hours, want to get to about 400 at least.  I think I enjoy studying or I tell myself that I do so it feels less of a drag.

 
It’s not too much.  Do what you gotta do!!  I’m at 200 hours, want to get to about 400 at least.  I think I enjoy studying or I tell myself that I do so it feels less of a drag.
I'm 100 hours into my studying and I wander between feeling like I'm on target or ahead of schedule and feeling completely hopeless. I think the latter is just a side effect of overall exhaustion. I really push it at night when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep. Gotta stay positive!

 
I'm 100 hours into my studying and I wander between feeling like I'm on target or ahead of schedule and feeling completely hopeless. I think the latter is just a side effect of overall exhaustion. I really push it at night when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep. Gotta stay positive!
Either way, you are learning which is a very good thing.  Definitely stay positive!  You got this.

 
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