PE Civil Structural 2018 - October 2018 - California

[Orca2552_PE]

Hey Guys,

October 2018 will be my second attempt at the PE Civil Structural after having done well in the AM and royally screwing up the PM in the April 2018 cycle. I think I put in around 300-350 hours of self study (No review courses) spread out over 5.5 months and still came out unsuccessful. I know I need to start working on my weak areas based on my diagnostic, but still looking for help in terms of what to differently as far as my study pattern is concerned, or just how to approach this exam in general.

The main purpose of this thread however, was to find out if anyone was interested in studying together (sharing notes, tests, materials,etc. Even meeting on weekends to solve practice problems together) Do let me know. 

Any help is appreciated guys! Cheers!

 

[bsimms89]

If you can afford it I highly recommend EET. April 2018 was my first attempt, they made the morning a breeze, and the afternoon even though there were a handful of curveball problems, their practice problems made me familiar enough with the codes to find a lot of those questions in them.

 

[Orca2552_PE]

Thank you! Just wanted to know whether EET is going to be worth it. I know that a lot of people (including you) said that it covered almost all the questions on the AM for the April 2018 cycle, but has it been that way for some time now (with the previous exam cycles also)? Or is it just the one time thing? I see that they boast of an 85% passing rate which is pretty impressive. Also I don't know if I should take just the AM review from EET and do the PM on my own (from better and reliable books this time), or do the PM review at EET and do the AM by myself. What do you think? My scores were 31 AM and 19 PM. 

 

[leggo PE]

I can attest that EET's binders covered nearly all the morning questions in the April 2017 exam, so it's at least a two-time thing!

But really, I think their AM class does a great job, and that's been said cycle after cycle here on EB.com.

As for picking one of the two classes? Based on your scores, I might be tempted to take their structural PM class were I you, and do the morning on my own, purely because your morning score is already quite good. That does not mean, however, that I would forget to still study the AM sections! You don't want to let that score drop.

That's my two cents!

 

[youngmotivatedengineer]

What were your weak sections in the morning?  Does it overlap with any of the afternoon topics? 

 

[Orca2552_PE]

I can attest that EET's binders covered nearly all the morning questions in the April 2017 exam, so it's at least a two-time thing!

But really, I think their AM class does a great job, and that's been said cycle after cycle here on EB.com.

As for picking one of the two classes? Based on your scores, I might be tempted to take their structural PM class were I you, and do the morning on my own, purely because your morning score is already quite good. That does not mean, however, that I would forget to still study the AM sections! You don't want to let that score drop.

That's my two cents!

@leggo PE, thank you for your input! I think for the PM, I made the (grave) mistake of focusing too much on design problems. The test had a lot of analysis and code questions, and I think that was my undoing. But I will take a call sooner than later. 

 

[Orca2552_PE]

What were your weak sections in the morning?  Does it overlap with any of the afternoon topics? 

@youngmotivatedengineer by weakness if you mean the areas that I scored lower than the average passing candidate, then there's construction loads and soil mechanics (barely below average) and structural mechanics surprisingly (I thought I got all of those right) was considerably below average. Rest were good. 
 

So to answer your questions about overlapping topics, I guess you could say the structural part and may be construction loads because there's a little about that on the structural PM. 

 

[youngmotivatedengineer]

@youngmotivatedengineer by weakness if you mean the areas that I scored lower than the average passing candidate, then there's construction loads and soil mechanics (barely below average) and structural mechanics surprisingly (I thought I got all of those right) was considerably below average. Rest were good. 
 

So to answer your questions about overlapping topics, I guess you could say the structural part and may be construction loads because there's a little about that on the structural PM. 

Based on that you may be good with self-studying the am section and going with EET for depth. If you look at the schedule for the Structural depth, you do get access to a portion of the breadth topics that overlap with the structural depth. Also check the last page of the test specifications regarding what methods the test is based on. If you use incorrect method you could get the wrong answer.