PE Breadth Prep

[akent62]

Hello,

I will be taking the Civil PE: Water Resources and Environmental for the second time this October. I did horrible on the breadth and I plan to put a lot of focus on this section, while still studying the depth. I signed up for the EET based on a coworkers recommendation, and after reviewing several posts on this website I feel really  glad about that decision. I have plenty of great practice problems for the depth, but I feel my practice problems for the breadth seem to be lacking. I have the "Practice Problems for the Civil Engineering PE Exam, A companion to the CERM" and this book doesn't break down into what is listed on the exam specifications. Specifically, Project Planning, Means and Methods, and Site Development seems to be lacking. Can anyone give me a suggestion for a great resource with breadth practice problems? I'm basically gonna toss out the CERM Practice Problems book as it seems like complete *****. Also, I started studying at the beginning of July and I'm studying anywhere from 8-12 hours per week, my job is laid back and allows me to study for ~2 hours per day. Does this seem like to much time? Or should I step it up?

Thanks

 

[JoshG2112]

While I know my study method won't work for everyone, I spent 15-20 hours going through the CERM and highlighting everything I felt was relevant for the exam based on the listed criteria from NCEES.  For the morning the only references I used were the CERM and the practice exams.  I bought 10 practice exams for the breadth and went through four or five reasonably quickly and got to a point where I could get 35/40 or better consistently.  Then took a few each week for the ~3 weeks before the exam to make sure everything stayed fresh.  I ended up having to go through a few of them twice, but it worked really well for me.  Going through that many practice exams made it so I could find the correct section of the CERM quickly and I could find similar examples in the practice exams if needed.

I found the "Practice Problems for the PE Exam" awful for studying.  I opened it for about 5 minutes, realized a lot of the problems aren't relevant and didn't want to deal with digging through to find useful practice problems.  

I studied about 100 total hours, but if you can study 2 hours a day at work I would try to study at least another 10 hours a week on your own, at least until you feel very confident you can pass.  Better to be over-prepared.

For practice exams I used:

NCEES official practice exam

PE Prepared exams (2 exams, version A and B)

Practice exams for the Civil PE exam by Goswami (2 exams in the book)

Mike's Civil PE Exam Guide by Mike Hansen (1 exam)

Civil Engineering PE Practice Exams by CIvil PE Practice(2  exams)

Civil PE Exam: Breadth and Structural Depth by David Gruttadauria ( 2 exams)

 

[squarepegs]

Do as many problems as humanly possible.  Here's a link to hundreds: https://www.patreon.com/sqrpgz

Good luck!