re: Any other OT engineers bringing a small library with them to PE exam Friday?

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So the (self proclaimed) "hardest degree field on the planet" allows unlimited open books for exams? Sounds legit....

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Once again the misguided belief that open book exams are all easy. I have taken open book oral and written exams where like the PE exam any type of reference material you wanted to lug in was allowed. Without a through understanding of the material and how to apply it, it would be impossible to pass the exam regardless of the reference material available. There is a lot more involved than memorizing and regurgitating facts and figures.

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It might have been heavy b/c you brought three of the same edition of the highway safety manual?

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3 volumes.

The hardest test I ever had was open book. Our normal class time was 8 to 915am...the test started at 5pm and went until 10 pm. No one left early.

The professor also told us we could bring any book we wanted, our cell phone to phone who ever we wanted, etc.

The test was a single sheet of paper with 3 questions. From the three questions my answers where 21 engineering paper pages of explanations and calculations.

I set the curve...I can test like a champ.

Brothernlaw took it with just a calculator

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Taking civil/structural this Friday

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You guys definately have the worst one, from what I’ve seen. A friend in civil who took it at the same time as me actually used a cooler with wheels to carry his books in, i saw guys with the little red wagon setup as well. All civils.

I took mine in control systems, only had 5 or 6 books and didn’t use all of them.

Look up the percentages on the test of what the questions will be derived from( I assume that is still available), that may help you to make an informed decision if you want to go lighter. I’d bring all I thought I might need. You’re better off having material you don’t need than needing one you don’t have. The book that helped me the most was one I got from a friend about a week before the test and I almost blew off bringing it.

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I’ll be one of the poor suckers sitting in the back of the room taking the SE (and yes, I’ll have what I consider to be a medium sized library with me).

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You brave, poor soul. I will say my prayers.

Thats my next endeavour once I get past this one.

They’ll probably cover the am pretty good. I didn’t take a class for the PE I just had a crap load of tabs in the CERM and knew where everything was. Really, if you’ve taken a practice test or two, you can already pretty much guess 2-3 types of questions you’ll likely be getting for each morning subdiscipline (water, transportation, geotech etc). One word of advice if you are using the CERM is to go to PPI’s website and print off the CERM index and put it in a 1” 3 ring binder. This way, you don’t have to keep flipping back to the back of the CERM to find what page everything is on. The index is actually pretty good.

The pay here in the SE hasn’t really adjusted for the SE. no way I could suffer through that for a 5% raise.

Yea that’s what keeps creeping into my mind. Where I work the policy is PE licensure is an automatic 10% raise. There’s no guarantee for anything for SE and I understand that since it’s really not required in most states, plus that would give structural guys two guaranteed raises for taking tests. But my manager is supportive of me pursuing it and I’m pretty sure it will be looked on favorably in the future for advancement so I guess that’s why I’m doing it other than just being stubborn and liking the challenge.