Practice Problems for the Breadth and Depth Sections

sanjeem · Jan 17, 2017

Hello Everyone,

Planning to take my Exam in October. Water Resources is the one I'm sticking to, because that's the topic I have the most background in education wise. I have PPI's Practice Problems for the Civil Engineering PE Exam. I wanted to know if those problems are representative of the actual exam, as I've heard some people say they are actually harder. Furthermore, are the problems in that book good for the depth section?

Are there any other good books for practice problems (both for Depth and Breadth)?

Thank you.

GBS PE · Jan 17, 2017

I would agree that PPI's practice problem book, a companion to the CERM, contains questions that are more difficult than what you will encounter on the exam. I recall the PPI book containing questions with "Time limit - 1 hour" in the problem statement. That's not the kind of problem you're going to see on the exam.

Another thing, and this is perhaps more important: the PPI book does not adhere very closely to exam outline. That book is a bible, a compendium, and it contains everything under the sun. But if a topic not in the NCEES outline, its not on the exam. Don't waste your time studying it.

If you have not already, sign up for EET breadth and depth review course. It's online and on-demand if you wish. The instructors do an outstanding job of presenting the necessary material and providing a series of appropriate practice problems. I can't overstate how useful this class was to me.

I posted this over in the Construction exam subforum a few days ago. I would assume that Goswami has equivalent books for WRE exam-style questions. What worked for me was solving a lot of practice exams in the most realistic setting as possible. I had set up a study area in my basement and used that exclusively for studying and simulated exams.

Best luck to you.

matt267 PE · Jan 17, 2017

+1 for EET's course.

In addition to EET, I found the following two books to be very helpful when studying for the WRE depth:

https://ppi2pass.com/water-resources-and-environmental-depth-practice-exams-for-the-civil-pe-exam-cewepx.html

https://ppi2pass.com/water-resources-and-environmental-depth-reference-manual-for-the-civil-pe-exam-cewe.html

Edit:

The problems from the practice exam are more difficult and in-depth than the real exam. But they're worth doing.

sanjeem · Jan 18, 2017

Thank you both for the information. I'll check out EET's course, it seems like many people recommend it. I am currently skimming through the CERM, but obviously as matt267 has stated, there's far more information in it than necessary for the exam. Any ideas on how to determine which sections to definitely skip? I had a colleague tell me that I should just start solving problems before even reviewing/learning the materials, that way I'd know what information I need to know through solving the problem. Is that a good strategy?

GBS PE · Jan 18, 2017

Sanjeem,

Your first stop should be a visit to the NCEES exam outline located here. NCEES posts a detailed outline of each and every exam topic. It's really quite generous - they tell you every subject on which you might be tested. If a topic is not present on the exam outline, you will not be tested on it. Those are the topics you should skip over in your studies.

In my case, I studied with EET's review course first before starting practice problems. Frankly I didn't have the confidence to determine that I had a subject sufficiently mastered prior to reviewing it in a lecture format. EET will present a semester's worth of course work to you in 8 hours. That is, they will cover all of Soil Mechanics / Foundations in like 8 hours. It's rigorous and fast-paced, but worth it. Once you've completed 8 hours of review, you can attempt the practice problems. If you're struggling on some problems, you know specifically which sub-topic you need to go back and read more on.

After finishing all of the review for breadth and depth, including practice problems, I moved on to comprehensive simulated exams.