Q2 2021 Post-Surveying Exam Thoughts

[NKG]

Passed surveying and finally done with PE!! Wishing everyone best of luck

 

[KirbyQ]

Passed both! Good luck everyone!

 

[user 40777]

congrats all passed results! I failed my surveying. Time to recalibrate after my seismic in June.

 

[Water_engineer]

Passed Surveying on my fourth try. I am finally done with PE. That was a brutal experience , I took 3 classes to pass. In the end it was Rezas class that is the best, my last result was deficient deficient deficient proficient with EET and CPESR. This time I passed with just reza. I will be glad to help anyone with any questions

 

[user 40777]

Passed Surveying on my fourth try. I am finally done with PE. That was a brutal experience , I took 3 classes to pass. In the end it was Rezas class that is the best, my last result was deficient deficient deficient proficient with EET and CPESR. This time I passed with just reza. I will be glad to help anyone with any questions

Congrats! I might look into Reza’s review for the next round. Do you think the practice problems for Reza better represent what’s on the exam?

 

[Assistant to the RM]

Passed seismic, now a long month of waiting for survey results...

 

[Calicivil]

Passed seismic, now a long month of waiting for survey results...

Congrats I passes surveying doing seismic next month. What did you use for seismic? I tried AEI the first time but he talks so slow and has almost too many videos like he has a video that is an hour long on getting good sleep the night before the exam lol

 

[Bounty]

I failed the second time with Mansour's material. Folks that have passed, do you recommend a particular course/books?

 

[XrayCP1]

I failed the second time with Mansour's material. Folks that have passed, do you recommend a particular course/books?

Personally, I took EET for 8 hour and surveying, and I thought their material was put together well. I passed each test first time. I did have a decent amount of background in surveying just from working on construction sites and interacting with surveyors, so maybe I was primed for understanding the material from the beginning.

Not that you're asking about seismic, but I just passed on my second try. I took a review course (Hiner) my first time, and I thought I understood everything, but I learned that a single course didn't adequately expose me to enough different types of problems. My strategy studying for my second attempt was to just do as many problems from as many different courses as I could find. I asked friends and coworkers for their old study materials, and I ended up finding 10 practice exams and around 900 practice problems. The first time, I felt like I knew the material, but the second time, I felt like I could teach the material.

By the time I passed the second time, I also had about 5 months looking at this material between the two times I spent studying for each test, and the addional 6 weeks I had to keep studying after the February glitch caused me to postpone my actual test date.

Best of luck to you! You can do it! You have passed other tests, you are smart, just try to think of something you can do to attack this test from a different or new angle.

 

[PlanCheckEng]

I failed the second time with Mansour's material. Folks that have passed, do you recommend a particular course/books?

Recommend Reza book. Problems are more difficult than the exam but should have you well prepared. Also, CPESR is pretty good.

 

[Water_engineer]

Passed Surveying on my fourth try. I am finally done with PE. That was a brutal experience , I took 3 classes to pass. In the end it was Rezas class that is the best, my last result was deficient deficient deficient proficient with EET and CPESR. This time I passed with just reza. I will be glad to help anyone n

Congrats! I might look into Reza’s review for the next round. Do you think the practice problems for Reza better represent what’s on the exam?

Congrats! I might look into Reza’s review for the next round. Do you think the practice problems for Reza better represent what’s on the exam?

Yes absolutely. There were several problems that I found similar to what I learned from Reza. Imo if you know how to do 90% of the problems (concepts, not just how to solve) in his workbook you should pass. You also need to supplement Reza workbook with EET or cuomo or something comprehensive for the concepts because his book is mostly good for calculation problem solving and may be missing some stuff for conceptual. I also recommend you take the live webinar, I called him after my third fail and I had his old workbook but he was very helpful. When you sit for gis class (four 8 hour days) it may seem like a lot but you will truly understand concepts that were previously confusing. Let me know if you have any other questions

 

[Dynamic Dirt Engineer]

Passed seismic, now a long month of waiting for survey results...

Saaame.... Just took surveying last Saturday, so it's gonna be a wait.

 

[KirbyQ]

I failed the second time with Mansour's material. Folks that have passed, do you recommend a particular course/books?

I have no previous surveying coursework/experience. I passed Surveying the first try this past April.
I did not do any courses. I used mainly Mansour's book with a textbook I rented from Amazon called "Elementary Surveying: An Introduction to Geomatics"(which is also in the reference list from the Board website). I think Mansour's book is mainly based on this textbook (and more concise) as a lot of diagrams/paragraphs are the same.
I will read Mansour's chapter first and then read relevantt chapters in the textbook if I need to understand some concepts further. This works out pretty well for me.
I think the exam in the end is geometry questions disguised in the context of surveying. You need to know the concept/terms to correctly understand the questions and then solve geometries to obtain the answers.

 

[Assistant to the RM]

Congrats I passes surveying doing seismic next month. What did you use for seismic? I tried AEI the first time but he talks so slow and has almost too many videos like he has a video that is an hour long on getting good sleep the night before the exam lol

I used Hiner's Seismic Design Review. Some would say he also goes through the material kind of "slowly" but I would say thorough. For reference there are 32 hours of webinar videos. The main thing I didn't like was that he only gives you 40 hours to watch them - meaning there is a timer on your account, so there is limited repeatability. I found the order he presented the material to be very intuitive. His workbook is great, as well as some quick reference sheets you can put in your binder with shortcut tables to look up Sds and Sd1 based on Ss and S1 and Site Class.

After my Seismic exam was cancelled the first time due to the glitch, I bought the AEI practice tests, and that came with his final review video that you mentioned where he talks about getting enough sleep the night before, etc. It also came with a copy of Dr. Ibrahim's reference sheets, which are similar to Hiner's. I thought Dr. Ibrahim's reference sheets were a little more "polished" than Hiner's, but I had been using Hiner's for all my practice tests so I stuck with them for the real thing. I thought Hiner's practice tests were a little more polished than AEI's, but they were both good content. Good luck!

One other tip that I found helpful was watch a sample video from the instructor before signing up for a course. Hiner has just an introductory video about his course, no exam content, but it gave me a good feel for his speaking pace and presentation style. CPESR has a couple of sample videos on youtube - differential leveling and horizontal curves. After watching those videos I felt comfortable with his presentation style as well.

 

[NKG]

I failed the second time with Mansour's material. Folks that have passed, do you recommend a particular course/books?

I used the CPESR, Mansour and Reza materials. I would recommend using the Reza book, problems in the book are harder but its really good to understand concepts and get used to solving problems quickly. I did not take any courses. First I did the CPESR to understand all concepts and then practiced problems. Also would recommend taking lot of practice tests, I felt short on time during the actual test. You can definitely do it, Good luck!

 

[Dynamic Dirt Engineer]

I took the CPESR course. Some of it was new material for me, and some was stuff I had seen before (never had a surveying class). Took about 1.5 weeks to get through the lecture videos and workbook, then I powered through the practice exams in a week. I took them in order, one a day Saturday through Wednesday then took Thursday off and studied again Friday evening after work for a Saturday morning exam. I feel like the CPESR practice tests were spot on for preparation.

 

[davesgarage]

Wanted to start a thread for some post-exam therapy/ranting/venting/shared experiences. Interested to hear other's experiences as more testers sit through Q2.

My experience:
I took my surveying exam today (April 3rd) for the first time and felt really beat up after. I approached this exam by trying to knock out all of the no-calc definition/concept questions (I want to say there were at least 9 to 11) and managed to do that in good time but then it was all downhill from there. I seemed to end up with a lot more really wordy questions than I anticipated and it flustered the hell out of me so I would skip. Also, time became a major issue despite feeling confident after taking 5 different practice tests and a month of nightly + weekend studying. I ended up with 15 questions or so I was struggling to finish at the 30 min mark. Anyway, I am telling myself that I will most likely need to retake but the good thing is now I know the testing facility, format, and exam areas of focus. Seismic is next but I gave myself more time to focus on that since I completely do not know what to expect on that subject.

Also, can anyone can offer advice on getting through these wordy type problems? I get hit with major anxiety when I see those types of problems and tend to lock up hard...

Good luck to all Q2 testers!

I just took my Surveying yesterday (May 13th) and had the SAME feelings as you did about it. I studied with an old Mansour book and an EET binder, 3 practice tests (1 Mansour & 2 Boniface) and like 2 months of weekend/weeknight studying. I was pretty annoyed at the test because of the wordy problems and horrible computer generated diagrams. I was able to recall about 25 questions I know I got right and the rest is a wash where I don't remember the question at all or if I got an answer/educated-guess/complete guess. I honestly just needed 30 more minutes to at least attempt all problems.

Anyways I'm in the same boat and I guess we are looking at 2-4 weeks for results? I'm taking my Seismic June 24, 2021 so I guess that'll help keep my mind off Surveying...

 

[DEEPSEA]

Anyone else waiting for May 2021 seismic or survey exam results?

 

[Assistant to the RM]

Anyone else waiting for May 2021 seismic or survey exam results?

I'm waiting for surveying. My guess is next Monday the 7th, simply because April results came out Monday May 10th. Looking back at a couple results threads earlier this year, January results came out Thursday Feb 4, February results came out Monday Mar 8. Page 2 of the January Results thread has a useful list someone put together, listing results dates going back to 2018. Looks like they've been as early as the 4th and as late as the 16th.

 

[jr_inthefog]

Same- just took my 2nd time in May ‘21. My surveying test had been cancelled 3 times in the last year due to Covid and invalidated once due to the Prometric tech glitch in Feb ‘21. Also they did not offer it for a 4Q20 due to covid. In a normal time, I could have taken the test 5 times in this period. Ready to get this over. Cross fingers. I did take it for the 1st time on July 2, 2021 and received a fail on Aug 18th (which is later than the 16th mentioned above) which added to the drama, anxiety, and anger…

Anyone else have this much delay?