SE Exam Review Course

[imagine18]

I am preparing to take the SE Exam this fall and wanted to hear opinions on the best review course. It looks like, PPI, NCSEA, AISC and school of PE all put on courses. Most are pretty spendy, but the NCSEA course is cheapest (also the shortest). Does anyone have any preference on quality of presenters, course material, etc?

Thanks

 

[Lomarandil]

I've heard of PPI and School of PE as the market leaders, but don't know about them personally (we'll find out in a few days whether or not that was a good decision).

It would probably also help to know a bit about your background, which exam you plan to take (bridges/buildings) and what your preferred learning style is.

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

 

[imagine18]

Thanks Loma. I am taking the buildings portion...

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I currently teach one half of the PPI SE exam review course. I'll try to avoid advertising for the course (and leave that to PPI) as that's not really acceptable on eng-tips; but will provide my best attempt at an unbiased review of the PPI course as it compares with other review courses.

Overall I'd say the PPI course is the best "bang for your buck" course that I'm aware of. The cost is reasonably low for the contact hours and services when compared with others. You can get the more commonly used PPI SE exam texts highly discounted. You get instructors who have passed the 16-hour SE exam fairly recently. Finally, this last spring we had almost everyone who responded to our survey indicate that they were satisfied by the course, with some very glowing reviews.

This is a ridiculously hard course to teach as there is no possible way we can come close to covering everything required. The biggest benefits I see in a review course are focusing your studying (keeping on track and not falling behind is very hard), exposing you to areas outside your normal day-to-day work, and providing feedback and Q&A in a "group study" setting (you benefit from other peoples questions). However, expect that any review course cannot possibly cover everything, you will need to spend a lot of time outside the course studying. It also doesn't help that you have to provide a course that works for both bridge and building engineer, of various backgrounds and technical abilities, and get everyone on the same page. Trying to find that perfect balance between covering the right amount basic/advanced topics is almost impossible.

I can't really provide a good comparison to other courses as I haven't taken them. Overall, I'd say you could ask 20 engineers about the same course and get 20 different reviews from bad to good. Realistically you'll have to determine on your own what course matches your goals best on your own. I've heard both very bad and very good reviews of almost every course out there. Some other courses out there that you didn't mention are EET, various structural engineer associations (I believe SEAOC and SEAOI have a course), and ASCE also put out SE review courses.

At a minimum I'll say that I've always worked as hard as I can to ensure that everyone gets the most of my time in helping you pass the SE exam. I've never been accused of not being enthusiastic or helpful enough during the course.

If you have any specific questions about the PPI course let me know, I'll answer them as best I can.

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

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

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

As lomarandil said, what is your preferred learning style? That will likely at least eliminate a few courses from your options.

Also, don't forget to look at schedules and amount of time required. A course is almost useless if you don't have time to show up for it.

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

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

 

[imagine18]

Thanks for the information Tech! I am planning on going through as many example problems as possible. Also, I only plan on taking the lateral portion this fall, so i was looking for just a lateral review only if i could find it beneficial...

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Hmmmm, that's one thing the PPI course is not as good at (right now). It's setup for combined vertical and lateral only. We're working on getting a lateral only and vertical only version created but I don't know when this will be available. Certainly you could take the combined vertical + lateral and just ignore most of the vertical but I don't know how the pricing will compare to other courses when you do this.

We have setup the homework so that people who take combined vertical + lateral can avoid doing problems not tailored to their exam, and we do typically have a few people who take the course even only taking one section. Mostly because they want to get exposed to both topics while focusing their studies on just one. This way they likely only need to take one review course and can just self-study once they pass their first half.

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

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