Taking Civil Exam versus Environmental Exam

[Sail]

I was unsuccessful in passing the New York PE Environmental Exam in April 2009 and will be sending out my application to retake the exam in October 2009. I have been out of the engineering field for over 10 years and have recently returned to the field and would like to obtain my PE. It was recommened to me to retake the Civil Exam not the Environmental. Should I continue to take the Environmental Exam this time or switch to the Civil Exam. Does anyone has any advice?

 

[Dleg]

It depends on your education and work experience, and how competent you are int he subjects of the exam. Taking the Civil will add in several subjects that you are not tested on for the enviro exam, like structures, geotech, traffic. But then it also loses some of the enviro subjects such as air, solid and hazardous waste management, safety noise & radiation, etc.

Personally, I would probably stick with enviro and just try to strengthen the topics you were weak on in the exam. Basically just repeating your studying from before. Switching to civil just adds too much "new stuff" in my opinion. But if your degree was in civil, and you did well on those subjects in school, maybe it would be easier for you...

 

[Sail]

It depends on your education and work experience, and how competent you are int he subjects of the exam. Taking the Civil will add in several subjects that you are not tested on for the enviro exam, like structures, geotech, traffic. But then it also loses some of the enviro subjects such as air, solid and hazardous waste management, safety noise & radiation, etc.
Personally, I would probably stick with enviro and just try to strengthen the topics you were weak on in the exam. Basically just repeating your studying from before. Switching to civil just adds too much "new stuff" in my opinion. But if your degree was in civil, and you did well on those subjects in school, maybe it would be easier for you...

 

[Sail]

Thank you for the reply. That's what I was thinking. Now I just have to study!

 

[EnvEngineer]

You should check within you industry and see what limits you will have with the environmental, in california environmental is not recognized and you cannot sign off on anything, it may also limit you ability to sign typical documents within the industry like groundwater reports, remediation system designs and the like.

I am really not sure how the other states are handling this but in CA you really need a civil to do anything environmental.