Now that you are no longer in school, studying anything outside of your field of expertise is probably a chore. If you are not a structural engineer or have no desire of becoming a structural engineer, studying structural engineering for the PE exam is probably as pleasant as going to the dentist! In this post, I will provide you with 2 DOs and 2 DON’Ts when studying for the structural part of the breadth portion of the PE Civil exam for a nonstructural engineer. Hopefully this post will save you time and grief!
DON’T Stress Out!
Remember that the structural part is just a small part of the morning breadth section and it is even a smaller part of the overall PE exam. Per the NCEES Exam Specifications, only 6 of the 40 morning questions are related to “Structural Mechanics.” Therefore, the structural part is only 15% of the morning session and is only less than 8% of the whole exam! Given these facts, you should budget no more than 10% of your total study time to study structural engineering concepts. You are better off spending the vast majority of your study time on the depth portion of the test where you probably know more about the subject and there are more opportunities to get questions right.
DON’T Get Into the Weeds
It’s always tempting to try to learn everything. However, given the limited amount of time you have to study for the PE and the fact that there’s so much to learn in structural engineering, it is not smart to go in depth in your studies if you don’t already do structural engineering work for a living. You will end up just wasting a lot of time trying to understand minute points that will probably not be on the exam when you could be studying for something that could be on the exam and easier for you to understand.
So what should you do instead?
DO Know and Understand the General Concepts
Focus your study on knowing and understanding the overall concepts, not the numerical number crunching behind it. NCEES is making it extra easy for you to know what to study for by listing 12 structural concepts/elements that you need to know in its exam specifications. For example, it lists “trusses” as something you need to know for the exam. One way to assess whether you know enough about trusses is to ask yourself if you can solve for the reactions of a generic truss supports and determine the internal forces for each truss element. If the answer is yes, then do a couple of truss problems to confirm your knowledge of the subject. If you are able to get them right, then you probably don’t have to study “trusses” further! Do a similar general assessment for the other 11 structural concepts/elements as part of your study for structural engineering and you should be good to go.
DO Know Where to Look for Answers During the Exam
You don’t need to study and know everything because the PE exam is an open book exam! There is actually a secret weapon to passing the PE exam and it is called the Civil Engineering Reference Manual (CERM) from PPI. This reference book has pretty much everything you need to know for the exam and you don’t even have to memorize it because you can bring the reference to the test. If the exam asks you for a structural engineering question that you don’t know, just go to the CERM index to look up the key term/concept from the question and go to that section to learn more about it. Chances are that concept will be there in the CERM and you can learn about it on the spot and answer the question. Although I don’t recommend only studying the CERM, I know a lot of people that bring just the CERM to the exam and passed on one try.
Remember that the advice I gave you above is a general guide. How you study will depend on how much you know and your comfort level with structural engineering. The advice above also applies to other subjects that you don’t know well. I know I did the same when studying for the hydraulics/hydrology and soil mechanics portion of the exam and was able to do well in those parts even though they were not my area of expertise. If you are looking for study materials for the structural part of the PE exam, click here to get an exclusive 15% discount from PPI, the industry leader in PE study prep materials.