Plan to Take SE Exams (Bridge)... Recommend An Online Course for me PLS XD 4

[Stewie_]

Hi, Dear All,

I am planning to take SE exams (bridge) in April 2019. Do you guys have any recommendation regarding online review course? I saw the pass rate for bridge lateral load exam is very low... 17%?!

Do you guys have any experience with ppi2pass or school of PE? Please advise if you know any course worth taking for better preparation... It seems the online course is focused on building mostly(?). I am afraid the course would not cover enough materials for the bridge lateral load exam, especially for the afternoon session. Thank you so much for the help.

Thanks!!!

 

[EDub24]

I took the ppi2pass course and liked it although I took the buildings exam. They definitely focus more on buildings than bridges. The course will help you for the morning portion of the exam as that covers buildings and bridges and it does a general overview of lateral bridge which might be enough for you (at least for the morning). I recommend getting sample exams to practice the afternoon problems.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I used to teach part of the PPI SE course, so I'm biased. They were heavily focused on building and vertical when they started the course and I and the other instructor shifted them to add more bridge and lateral design topics to the course.

The focus is definitely still on buildings though for two reasons. One is the building engineers vastly outnumbered the bridge engineers taking the exam. The other is building engineers only need bridge design topics for the morning part of the exams, thus only need a general understanding of AASHTO design as it's only ~25% of the morning questions.

For bridge engineers the thought was that most bridge engineers already have a good understanding of AASHTO design already and likely just need refreshers on hand calcs and general exam strategy for AASHTO. However, many bridge engineers are vastly inexperienced with buildings and thus I would see a lot of bridge engineers fail the morning portion due to having 75% of the problems be in buildings. A buildings heavy course makes sense to how PPI structured the course.

My advice based on what I've read from people taking other courses is this; take PPI if you want the most bang for your buck. The PPI course is definitely not a replacement for self-study but is an efficient use of time and money taking the course and is worth it IMHO. I of course don't know the new instructor since I stopped teaching it. The other course I've heard good things about is the EET course. This course sounds to be much more comprehensive and detailed, but the contact hours are much higher and it costs more. Apparently the notes for that course are top notch. Perhaps more suitable for someone that doesn't do as well with self-study and has the time and money for it?

Check out engineerboards.com as well, lots more people discussing the SE exam there.

Yes, the pass rate for the SE exam is very low. It's an extremely hard exam and most people fail at least one part on their first try. Study hard and give it your best. Passing the SE exam was the best thing I did for my engineering career; I learned almost as much during that exam than my entire 4 years at university.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, VT, CT, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/