SE Exam Knowledge Depth

[StrucPEng]

Hello All,

I am planning on writing the Buildings SE Exam in October of this year and lately have been overwhelmed by the amount of material. I have collected all the required codes and standards for the exam referenced by NCEES as well as the items listed at the end of this post. My main concern is that during my studies I find myself trying to account for every possible scenario and case but find there are a number of clauses and code provisions that I would say are "special cases" or have very specific constraints that are not covered in the Structural Engineering Reference. How do you go about covering or knowing what you don't know come exam day? Obviously as a practicing engineer we have (most of the time) more than 6 minutes per question for study and review the various codes and standards to solve any particular issue, but that is not something that can be said of the SE exam.

- Would the best strategy be to take an 80/20 approach and cover well the 20% of material that covers 80% of the cases? And if so what are your thoughts on the 20% that is most useful to a Structural Engineer?
- Are there any specific areas where deep study of the majority of clauses and provisions would help make other areas easier?
- What are some study strategies that you found helpful in the completion of the SE Exam?
- Any specific tabbing, notations, or material condensing methods you found useful? (I have always thought that if you tab everything its as good as tabbing nothing)

I understand that the Se exam is a significant endeavor and I am not trying to find the easy way out or the trick to it but more a common set of strategies that people have used to prepare the best for it and that can be used moving forward in ones career. I know this may be a bit of a mixed bag of questions but i wanted to get as much out there as possible.

Thank you everyone!

Matt Soda, P.Eng.


List of other References
[ul]
[li]Structural Engineering Reference Manual, Ninth Edition[/li]
[li]SE Structural Engineering 16-Hour Practice Exam for Buildings, Fourth Edition[/li]
[li]Structural Engineering Solved Problems for the SE Exam, 7th Edition[/li]
[li]SE Structural Breadth Six-Minute Problems, Sixth Edition[/li]
[li]NCEES Structural Engineering Practice Exam[/li]
[li]CodeMaster Seismic Design (2015 IBC / ASCE 7-10)[/li]
[li]CodeMaster - Allowable Stress Design for Masonry (2015 IBC)[/li]
[li]CodeMaster Structural Wood Design ASD/LRFD (2015 IBC, ASCE 7-10, 2015 NDS)[/li]
[li]Concrete Design for the PE Civil and SE Exams, Third Edition[/li]
[li]Steel Design for the PE Civil and SE Exams, Third Edition[/li]
[li]California Civil Seismic Building Design, 12th Edition[/li]
[li]SEAOC Volumes 1-5[/li]
[/ul]

 

[P205]

I don't have any answers for you. But I noticed you signed your name with 'P.Eng'. Are you licensed in Canada? If so, are you finding it overwhelming because it's different from Canadian codes?

 

[Lomarandil]

I think you'll find that your practice problems will give you the best idea of that 20%. One strategy I've heard is to work through as many problems as possible, and tab based on what you need for those.

Coming into the test as a building engineer, I'd highly recommend David Connor's practice problems for AASHTO. Gives a great overview of what you'll need to know.

I'm a bridges guy myself, so I might not be the best person for this advice. But if you're willing to take an 80/20 gambit on the AASHTO material, I'd become most familiar with chapters 3.4, 3.6, 4, 5.7 and 6.10

----
The name is a long story -- just call me Lo.

 

[StrucPEng]

P205,

I am licensed in Canada where I completed all my education, so I am familiar with the Canadian Concrete Manual and the Canadian Steel Manual from school. With that said, Canada does not have a technical set of exams after school to become licensed and the majority of my experience has been more project management oriented with some steel connection design work. This is the main reason for choosing the SE exam as I would like to move toward working in commercial structural design in the USA and the exam will hopefully give me a great base to work from.

Lo,

Thanks for your response. That does sound like a good strategy to ensure the tabs are used for the sections most often referenced. I will also look into that book and take a good look at the sections that you mentioned above.

Matt Soda, P.Eng.

 

[cal91]

M_S, any update on how the exam went? I'll be taking it in April.

I'm debating getting the SEAC design guides... were they helpful beyond the STERM and lots of practice problems/exams ?

 

[StrucPEng]

Cal91, I think the exam went well, it was fairly difficult from a time management standpoint. Unless you know everything cold you can spend too much time searching which did happen for a few questions. Overall i felt good about my answers which was good.

As for the SEAC guide i cant comment unfortunately as I only sat for the Vertical portion as I did not have enough time due to other commitments to study for both Lateral and Vertical without compromising both, I plan on writing that in April.

I did find, for what its worth, that I didn't use the STERM as much as I had anticipated. I found that they have a general overview but they make a lot of simplifying assumptions in their explanations and formulas that are only applicable to fairly narrow examples. If the test asks something different and you are not familiar with the relevant code provisions the examples are not very helpful. I assume this is an even greater problem for the Lateral portion as they have distilled all lateral "knowledge" into one chapter. With that said, the more problems I could solve the better as I could work out nuances with different question types.

Hope that helps!

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I'm debating getting the SEAC design guides... were they helpful beyond the STERM and lots of practice problems/exams ?

SEAOC vol 1 is almost mandatory for lateral. Buy it and read it cover to cover at least once if not 2 or 3 times. It's incredibly valuable for a study aid, sample exam book, and as a reference on the exam.

The other volumes in SEAOC are less useful in my mind. I'd look at them and buy them if you have no other good references in those materials; but otherwise I generally didn't use them on the exam except during my studies.

I did find, for what its worth, that I didn't use the STERM as much as I had anticipated.

STERM is very much geared toward vertical; you'll almost never crack it for lateral except perhaps for bridges.

That said, I found STERM to be very useful for vertical and used it a lot on the exam. Likely just luck of the draw that the questions I got favored that text. Still, I too found that my own knowledge often allowed me to find the correct reference in the codes and other textbooks directly. STERM is great for studying though.

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

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