How hard is PE Civil Structural Exam

[CorporalToe]

I am currently a MS student and I recently passed my FE Exam, I’m thinking about just doing my PE Exam before school starts in September. I will just register with a state where the exam is decoupled.

How much studying is required? Is 2 months of prep enough and also do you have any advice?

 

[SWComposites]

PE Civil exam? Or PE Structural exam?
2 months prep is likely not enough, particularly for the Structural exam.
This has been discussed many times on these forums; suggest doing a search and reading thru them.

 

[CorporalToe]

It’s the PE Civil Structural

 

[human909]

I think this is almost a question that if you have to ask then you are not ready.

I say this as a non US engineer who faces hurdles significantly different (and easier) from the many members who are US based. [Also 10seconds on google confirms that structural(SE) is significantly more challenging that Civil/Structural(PE).]

 

[RPGs]

I recommend purchasing a PE Civil Structural practice exam from the NCEES website and simulating the exam to the best of your ability (e.g. time yourself, do not allow yourself to look at notes or practice problems for reference, and only utilize the code references with no bookmarks/annotations/tabs, ideally in searchable pdf form). Gauge your need for study time based on your performance on the practice exam.

 

[David Deck Guy]

You can pass the PE Civil Structural Exam by studying the test. Get the NCEES practice exam, and keep running the questions until you can do them in your sleep.

To pass the PE Structural Exam, you need to know the material, and the amount of material is enormous.

 

[Goatenstein]

I recently passed the PE Civil Structural exam and concur with the advice given above. Do the NCEES practice exam to get a feel for their format and see what areas you are weakest in. Then consider purchasing a study course from ASCE or somewhere similar. I found it to be very comprehensive and a very good starting point for study. I ended up spending about 100 to 200 hours studying, but your milage may vary.

 

[Heaviside1925]

OP,
For your consideration:
-Why do you want your PE? Is it a feather in your cap or do you plan to leave academia after receiving your masters?
- Keep in mind the PE is to become a professional, ie knowing the relevant codes and knowing how to effectively work through them in a timely manner. There will be some, what seem to be FE type questions, but they will likely use terminology and methodology from the code books to work through.
- If you do not have a strong working knowledge of the relevant codes, it will take you a considerable amount of time and effort to become so.
- The strategy about registering a in state that decouples the exam from the experience may sound good but understand the states that require the experience first are doing so in order for you to work under a professional to learn how to work through the relevant codes. Will you still need to study? Yes, but you will have a much better idea of what your knowledge base needs to be.
- If you are staying in school to get your Phd, I think some state count that towards your work experience required in order to challenge the exam.

Having passed the PE exam is a good negotiation tool when going to search employment in the commercial sector but one needs to weigh the cost and benefits of their current situation and future goals before committing to the effort it would take you to become ready for the exam.

 

[canwesteng]

How hard it is is relative to how much you know - I took it this year, and with my background I felt like the ~50-100 hours of studying I did was too much. If you're fresh out of college it probably doesn't make sense to challenge it unless you have a lot of free time.

 

[CorporalToe]

For me I want to go out to the workforce after my masters. I figure I get it now rather than later because I have lots of time. Research isn’t something that’s takes 8 hours of my day right now, only probably 3-4 hours a day. I have taken design courses in steel, concrete, masonry and wood, alongside seismic design.

 

[Heaviside1925]

OP,
Consider a part time internship at a firm for half or whole semester, this combined with your own effort and study guides should get you a lot closer to being prepared. It might even land you a job post-graduation.

 

[DoubleStud]

This may not be a popular opinion, but for $175 (or however much it is) is pretty cheap to do a "practice" test. Be somewhat prepared, but don't kill yourself for it. I have given this advice to many of my engineer friends, a lot of them pass it first try with minimal study. If they did fail, they are much more prepared the second time because they have taken it before.

 

[dauwerda]

I agree with others here, take the NCEES practice test to gauge where you are at. My experience was that the NCEES practice test was very similar to the actual test and a 3rd party practice exam (from an exam prep course) that a friend gave me was way more difficult. I say that to stress that the NCEES test will be a much better gauge than other third party practice tests that may be available.

I started with the 3rd party test and got pretty stressed at the difficulty, then I took the NCEES practice and all my stress went away. I chose not to do much studying after that and had no issues in the exam. The SE is a very different story however.

Link to practice exam:

https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/470

 

[SteamedHams]

I work in bridge engineering. I do not know anyone who has failed the PE Civil Structural. I even know one bridge engineer who took the PE Civil Structural while she was doing her Masters. With that said, a considerable number of people still fail the exam. Also, that opinion is in the context of the old exam which had a common morning section.

 

[Richard_Honne]

How much studying depends on your knowledge and experience. I recommend completing the latest NCEES sample exam as is to gage where you're at.

My only advice is to study efficiently and effectively. It's generic but obviously there's no right answer.

As an anecdote, both my colleague and I took the exam around the same time after 5+ YOE. My colleague clocked in about 220 hrs of studying over the course of three months. Passed on her first attempt.

I myself clocked in about 45 hrs of studying over two months. I also never looked at the AASHTO or PCI manual until exam day. Also passed on first attempt. The exam is definitely difficult based on my minimal effort. Question I guess is how hard do you want to stress on the day of.

 

[KootK]

I thought that the PE Civil Structural was ridiculously easy. I'm a practicing structural so the structural part of that was a snap, as one would expect. Mostly just statics. And not even challenging statics. If you did your MS in structural, I suspect that the same would be true for you. As for the civil part:

- I hadn't touched anything civil-ish for 15 years when I wrote the exam, not since college. If you're at the tail end of a civil program, I'd think that you'd be significantly better off.

- For prep, all I did was read the table of contents of the big PPI guide book so that I'd have some hope of finding equations when I needed them.

I thought that the FE exam was actually much more of a near run thing for me than PE Civil / Structural.

When I was an Engi-Toddler, I used to study a lot for the exams. I don't have the time nor the emotional bandwidth for that now that I've matured. So now, I just take the exams without any significant preparation and, if I fail, I take them again. I've taken a ton of the US exams cold and the only time that I failed on the first try was the old Washington state SEIII, which I failed twice. In hindsight, I feel that just winging these things is a very rational approach unless you work for some douche bag employer who is going to peg your salary and all chances for future advancement on whether or not you pass the exam the first time (these employers exist). By winging it, you accomplish two sensible things:

a) Often you pass and do not waste a bunch of valuable time studying.

b) Failing helps you efficiently identify the exams that are worth the additional effort to study for.

If you were an ego free artificial intelligence, this is precisely how you would go about it I feel.

 

[canwesteng]

The new PE civil structural is structural only, I just took it this spring. I studied way too much and left about two hours early when I took it. In retrospect I could have passed without studying at all, but I've been practicing 10+ years now. The biggest thing is if you're teaching yourself how to answer the question each time you will run out of time to finish. Coming from a masters and you don't know where to look in the AISC manual or ACI 318 and you will burn a lot of time, especially with the way the pdfs are set up in the CBT.