Six-Week NCEES PE Exam Study Guide

You Need a Plan Six weeks until the PE exam. Have you organized your study plan? If not, here is one I put together for future examinees, already registered, six weeks out from their PE date (next exam date: April 12, 2013). The first thing you want to do is take a full PE practice exam. You need to know where you stand. Even if you have not yet prepared a detailed plan of study, you have most likely been studying various topics and double checking your reference books. Whatever you have done up to know, from nothing to a military-style study campaign, you need to assess your strengths and weaknesses. First, let's be sure you know which topics are covered on the PE exam. PE exam morning session topics: Each of five topics receives equal emphasis: Geotechnical Construction Transportation Structural Water Resources and Environmental Afternoon Session Modules: 40 Questions in 4 hours. You will choose one module for the afternoon session. The module options match the morning session topics: Geotechnical, PE Civil Construction, Transportation, Structural, and Water Resources & Environmental. Most important study topic: The module you select will become 60% of your exam. The afternoon section is 50% (obviously) and the morning portion of this topic accounts for another 10% (.20 x .50 = .10). Resource: For a full overview of the topics covered on the morning breadth exam and the Civil Structural: Click Here. For a more detailed breakdown of subtopics, see the ppi2pass introduction for the Civil Engineering Reference Handbook: PE Exam Topic Breakdown. Week 1 Study 6 days and take 1 day off. If you don't schedule relaxation, you will steal it wherever you can. Trust me, when you know you have down time later, it is easier to focus during scheduled study sessions. This first week, take a full 8-hour practice exam. If you start on a Saturday or Sunday, take the full 8 hour exam in 9 hours. Start at 8 a.m., take a 1hour lunch from noon to 1, and work the 4 hour afternoon Depth Exam from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Analyze Results of Your PE Practice Exam: Tabulate your results topically. Generate a score for each of the 5 topics. Rank them 1 to 5, with #1 being your strongest subject and #5 being your weakest topic.

For the first week of study, emphasize #1 and #5. Forget the other topics for now. Here is why: First, your brain needs to get back up to pace in intensity. Your brain actually requires increased blood flow to operate at increased levels. The PE exam tempo requires an increased level. You must slowly work your brain back up to the high performance levels required in college. Second, these two subjects have the greatest potential to produce a strong score on exam day. Your strongest subject area score on the first practice exam may not remain strongest on future practice tests and self-quizzes. The reason is that each subject has a wide variety of subtopics. I took 6 full practice exams, at 2-week intervals, with moderate study in between. My score on each topic varied up and down test to test (but trended upward overall). The subtopics randomly present in each PE practice exam will vary. And, your resultant score will also vary. This variance should be greater in subjects with the greatest number of subtopics- Structural has the most material (subtopics) and self-tests will produce variable results, reducing as your depth of knowledge increases. However, if you score high in Environmental and low in Structural (common), it is because your mind likes the topic of environmental, or you work in environmental. For some reason, you and environmental just get along. Build your strength in this topic to ensure you continue to produce strong results in all practice exams- and on the day of your PE exam. In your weakest area, there is the greatest room for improvement. You will rapidly improve in this subject. It is likely your low score is due to two factors, both easily corrected with a little time. 1. You are not familiar with variables. 2. You are not familiar with the reference materials (can't find the necessary equations). Study 4 hours each day, in the following format: Study the topics of the day for one hour. Next, take a 66-minute (maximum) self quiz. This is 7 problems. Take 4 questions from your strong area (#1), and 3 from your weak area (#5). For the remainder of the time, review the solutions for the questions you chose. If you purchased a print-copy book, answers are in the back. If you are using Exam Cafe on ppi2pass (highly recommended), use the review function to scroll through the questions and see the solutions. Using Exam Cafe has another benefit: you can generate 7- question (or 6 or 10 or whatever number you prefer) quizzes on topics you choose automatically. Since Exam Cafe generates the quiz automatically, you don't see the questions beforehand. Using a hard copy bookstore exam (PE exam booklets), you must look at the problem to assess its category, and then add it to your practice quiz. You will see the questions, and your mind will automatically begin processing an answer. And, you can easily run out of questions. Practice exam booklets provide 40 questions. Exam Cafe has 2,000. Exam Cafe is an excellent investment in your success. You can get a discount on materials at ppi2pass using discount code PLEASE. It works for most things. Regardless, you absolutely want to purchase Exam Cafe. If there are more than 30 days prior to your exam, purchase the 60-day membership for $75. Although 30 days is cheaper at 50 bucks, you will want to extend, even if you only have a few days remaining (I did). If you are looking for a full review course, be sure to check out PPI's offerings for online review courses, and in-class review courses in California and in New York. Again, the discount code

PLEASE will save you 5%. How many questions for a self-quiz? Generate quizzes on Exam Cafe using 7 questions. This way, 5 correct gives you 71.4%, which you should expect to be a passing score. Week 2 In a 3-month duration of study, I recommend taking a practice exam every other weekend. However, with a shorter timeline, you will benefit from taking more practice exams. As you experienced during the first week's quizzes, learning is more effective under the intensity of taking a test. So, test yourself. You will find you performed much better on this second exam. Likely this is primarily attributed to having become accustomed to intense focus from taking quizzes, and more so due to familiarization with your reference books. Between my first practice exam (40%) and my second exam (58%), I saw my greatest improvement. I attribute this to the two reasons mentioned above. This week, you also want to spend some time reviewing and familiarizing yourself with required reference books, and especially with the CERM. Tab your index pages. Several of the discounted book packages at ppi2pass.com include tabs to mark your indexes. If you did not order a package (which saves you up to 15%, and then 5% more with the promo code PLEASE). I bought some excellent tabs in Office Depot. Your local office supply should have the same. Be sure to find tabs with a clear sticky base. This way, once attached, they will not cover any words. Also in Week 2, start a Quick Reference Folder. This is a binder you will create to hold all the most referenced tables, charts, and solutions you find valuable. This week, study the #2 and #4 subjects from your Week1 practice PE exam. However, on the fourth day, study last week's topics. This forces you to recall the data, and to recall the location of formulas and tables in the reference material. Strengthen Recall- a Key to Exam Success No matter which exam you are taking, from grade school to college to professional life, during an exam, you must recall. Recollection is a specific ability of the mind. The more you recall something, the easier and faster it becomes. This is another reason taking practice quizzes and practice exams is a very effective study method. Week 3 This week, take a break from the 8-hour exam. Instead of using a new exam to determine the two focus topics for this week, combine the results of the previous two tests, and make a judgment call about which topic to add to #3 from Week 1. #3 is the one topic you have not yet focused on. Week 4 Practice test time! Hurray! Make this week's quizzes comprehensive. Exam Cafe will generate this in a minute, and keep your time for you. By this time, you should receive a score of 70% or better. Most of these points will

come in the Morning Breadth Exam. In my own practice exams, I steadily improved, with less increase in later weeks. I always scored more in the morning section. I took the structural afternoon exam. I passed both NCEES exams on the first try using this system. Week 5 Take another comprehensive exam. This may seem like a lot of practice exams. However, this is where the lion's share of your improvement will come. Psychological studies have proven that people forget lecture material like their minds are leaky buckets. But, put something on an exam, and they might remember it for years. The added stress increases recall. Assessing the effectiveness of time invested into each topic, plan your study time accordingly. Do not stress your brain by studying more than 4 hours per day. Be sure to get to sleep on time (not later than 11 p.m.) to allow your body to refresh and restore and regenerate. People who work with their minds require more sleep than people who perform physical labor. Force your Mind to Recall Previous Learning Mix up your quizzes, but continue to emphasize topics each day, no more than two per day. Review all the questions you miss on your quizzes. Because your mind was heightened when you looked at it the first time, there is a good anchor in your memory onto which you can attach the correct solution. For questions you almost solved, or which you understand very well, but missed, print out the solution and add it to a section of your Quick Reference Folder. I solved three questions on my Structural Depth module using solutions I copied from Exam Cafe. (I copied them into MS Word with ctrl-copy, ctrl-paste, and printed them.) Week 6 This Friday is PE exam day. The brain operates like a muscle. You have trained it up. Now, like professional athletes, you want to taper it down. Tuesday Take a practice exam on Tuesday. If you can't get the day off (comp time, maybe?), at least take a 4-hour morning or afternoon practice exam. Wednesday Study for 2 hours. Review problems from previous tests, especially the previous day's practice exam. Collect all your books into one place. Double check your exam day checklist. Thursday Take a 1-hour practice quiz. Review your results. Relax. Get to bed on time. Friday Wake feeling refreshed. Stretch out. On the drive to your exam site, drink a half cup of coffee without sugar. Find a place before your exam to exercise for 5 minutes before entering the exam room. The coffee and exercise will increase your blood circulation. These two techniques have been shown to improve test results by 5%. Don't forget: calculator, exam documents, photo ID.

Before you begin your exam, give thanks to God for preparing you. Ask for calm, focus, wisdom, and understanding. Concluding Notes: Many suggest a minimum of 300 hours study. I believe this can be decreased using the intensity of self-administered practice exams and quizzes. If you have just six weeks to study, this is my suggestion. If you are planning when to begin, I recommend 12 weeks. The longer time frame permits the brain to develop its capacity to meet the challenge. I used Exam Cafe. I felt the actual morning problems were easier than those on Exam Cafe. When I finished, I actually wondered if there is a prize for best score! I had the opposite sentiment on the afternoon part. Though I finished, the problems were more a wee bit more difficult than the PPI PE sample questions. Next: Generic Test Taking Tips. Tried and true, these tips will help you with overall mental performance on a day to day basis, not just on exam day.