The best advice I can give those who are getting ready to take the exam

[FromThisSoil]

I passed my exam on my second attempt. I attribute my exam failure on the first attempt to being unorganized, nervousness, and procrastination. I learned my lessons from my failure and adjusted.

This is the best advice I can give to those of you who are studying for the upcoming PE exam:

1. If you have a hard time motivating yourself to study, take a live webinar review course that forces you to attend at certain times.
   
2. Get good at taking an exam. Take as many timed exams in a mock-exam environment as you can. Be set up as closely to exam day as possible - use a pencil and bubble sheet.  Do not look at the material beforehand.
   
3. Build your own “Quick Reference Guide” binder. I put together my own reference guide that contained material from all the outlined test material. I also had a section for conversions. Each section had a summary of formulas and hand written step by step outlines on how to do certain types of problems.
   
4. Have all the specified references and flag important chapters or pages. Don’t over flag or you’ll never find what you’re looking for because there’s too many flags.
   
5. If you’ve borrowed material from your colleagues, remake the flags, bookmarks, or notes in your own hand writing. It’s a lot easier to read your own handwriting when you’re under the gun.
   
6. If you are taking a review course, do all the practice problems. Seriously. I took EET Structural and there’s hundreds of practice problems. I. Did. Them. All.
   
7. If your review material didn’t come with or have good indexes, make your own. If the pages weren’t numbered, number them yourself.
   
8. It’s hard not to be nervous when you take a big exam, especially when you want to pass and not feel like a failure in your office. Do your best not to worry what people will think about you if you fail. If you fail, you will adjust and overcome.
   
9. Buy a seat cushion for your exam day chair. Seriously. You will thank me.
   
10. While taking the exam, if you’re stuck on a question or find yourself endlessly flipping around looking for answers, skip it. That question will be in the back of your mind while you continue and it will probably eventually come to you. I wasted way too much of my exam time flipping around trying to find something.
    

 

[vcuevas]

Thank you so  much for this! I have failed several times and I think I never I have enough time to review all the material, I started earlier this time hoping to get more time to review everything and do more problems. I have been thinking about taking a class ( I took the SOPE I didnt feel it helped a lot) and a Lot of people are recommending EET, so I will probably do that one too. Congrats on passing the exam!!!!

 

[samiha]

Thank you for sharing! I am planning on taking the PE Structural exam in October and I am also enrolled with EET. 

I have a few questions: 

1) The 'Quick Reference Guide' is a great idea! Can you share the guide you made or take a picture of one page so we can see an example of how you did it? Did you end up using the 'cheat sheets' that EET provided?

2) Did you do work on problems from other resources from EET and how similar were the questions on the actual exam to the EET practice problems?

3) How early/how long did you study for?

4) Did you have all of the recommended books such as PCI/AASHTO and if you did, did you end up using them during the exam?

 

[Harryasd]

I am planning to give Oct 2019 PE TFS exam. To those who have given the exam, what would be the typical number of equations/steps required to solve most of the problems?
Does all problems require 6 mins to solve? 


 

 

[FromThisSoil]

Thank you so  much for this! I have failed several times and I think I never I have enough time to review all the material, I started earlier this time hoping to get more time to review everything and do more problems. I have been thinking about taking a class ( I took the SOPE I didnt feel it helped a lot) and a Lot of people are recommending EET, so I will probably do that one too. Congrats on passing the exam!!!!

Thank you. Most of the professors are good. I took the structural depth - some of their structural guys talk very fast, but I guess they have a lot to cover. You have to do some self studying and crank out as many problems as you can. 

Thank you for sharing! I am planning on taking the PE Structural exam in October and I am also enrolled with EET. 

I have a few questions: 

1) The 'Quick Reference Guide' is a great idea! Can you share the guide you made or take a picture of one page so we can see an example of how you did it? Did you end up using the 'cheat sheets' that EET provided?

2) Did you do work on problems from other resources from EET and how similar were the questions on the actual exam to the EET practice problems?

3) How early/how long did you study for?

4) Did you have all of the recommended books such as PCI/AASHTO and if you did, did you end up using them during the exam?

1) The summary of formulas that EET give you are very good. Those all made debut in my personal reference guide. I gave mine to a co-worker so they can model it after mine, so I can’t provide a photo right now. It was a 4” binder with sections for all the major AM topics and PM topics. As for the hand notes, I had step by step guidelines for all the ASCE 7 wind, seismic, ice, and snow loading. I had separate sections for properties of shapes/areas, conversion factors, and shear/moment formulas for beams (NDS, CERM, AISC).

2) I did not really do any problems from any other source other than EET. They give you quiz problems and practice problems. I think there were at least 40 problems per section of material, plus quiz problems and sample problems. I spent an entire weekend doing steel problems alone. I would say the questions are about on par with the exam and some possibly more complex (multi step problems).

3) I basically started studying for the April exam when I found out I failed the October exam in December. I would say I was doing a minimum of 1 hour a day until the last 2 months leading into it. After that I really ramped things up and was doing on average 2 hours a week night and at least 6-8 hours on the weekends. I did a total of three 8 hour mock exams at the library on Saturdays near the end.

4) I had everything. Didn’t use the PCI and I didn’t need to use the AASHTO because I actually knew the answer to the question (I’m a bridge guy). 

I am planning to give Oct 2019 PE TFS exam. To those who have given the exam, what would be the typical number of equations/steps required to solve most of the problems?
Does all problems require 6 mins to solve? 


 

Some questions require 30 seconds and some take 10 minutes. It kind of averages out I guess.

 

[ads0221]

I have to say this is a great topic and exactly what I went through. I ended up passing my second time Civil Structural after taking EET.

The key in my passing the second time would be...

1) Taking an online class. What this does is keep you accountable not only because you paid for the class but because it keeps you on a schedule. No more "I'll cram this in one weekend, or I'll do those problems whenever."

2) Knowing what my references were and how to find things in them. The first time I took it, everything seemed to be a second language, however the good news is the more you study everything becomes second nature.

3) Working as many practice examples as possible. Why? You start to know which problems you excel at and which ones you have no clue. The second time I took it I made myself not look at the solutions and it helped more than anything. EET alone provided hundreds of examples and working all of them lead my into my last point.

4) Have some confidence. The first time I walked in I knew I was under prepared, my notes were hand me downs and in some cases wasn't up to date. The second time I had everything I needed in my suitcase, I knew what I was good at and wasn't good at. If you're reading this, work the problems you know and skip the ones you don't especially in the afternoon. No matter how long you study there will be problems in your depth that you have never touched, they want you to spend 30 min working one problem. It's all about answering as many as possible just like a game show. It's better to work 4 problems that you think are 50/50 in the end than 1 problem that you think is 75% confidence.

 

[SacMe24]

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[SacMe24]

I am planning to give Oct 2019 PE TFS exam. To those who have given the exam, what would be the typical number of equations/steps required to solve most of the problems?
Does all problems require 6 mins to solve? 


 

@squaretaper PE....maybe you can help our friend here...

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

@SacMe24 this question was already answered in the Mechanical TFS forum and should be ignored as it is a multiple post.