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The best 20 hours you can spend preparing for the PE exam

By Skye Coleman • Engineered Career, Engineered Exam

So we’re just over 2 weeks out from the exam.  Chances are you’ve done some studying, maybe taken a practice exam or two, but you’re still looking for that knockout punch to maximize the study time you have left.  Well here it is.

Let’s be honest. If you’re a top-performer in your field, there’s absolutely no way that you’re going to listen to some of the ridiculous information that’s out there about the PE exam.

Typical PE Exam Studying Advice

300 hours?  Are you fucking kidding me?

If you’re like me, the very thought of that makes you laugh.  I can’t remember anything that I did where I spent that much time preparing.  I spoke before about the way that I guaranteed you’d be able to pass the PE exam, and I figured maybe it’s time I get a little more in depth for how I spent my time preparing.

Your best friend for any exam like this is your reference manual.  If you don’t know it backwards and forwards, you’re going to be in big trouble.

Throughout your engineering career you likely lean on Google as a crutch to help out on those little problems and equations that you knew at some time but forgot long ago.  This manual is going to be the closest thing you have to a search engine, but unless your IQ is approaching 200 and you have an eidetic memory, you need to be intimately familiar with it.

In order for that to be possible, you need to be using this as you work through the practice exams from NCEES.  Therefore, this should be the first thing you put your focus on – before ever hitting the books or working through your first problem.

So what goes in a PE exam reference manual?

The overall point of any manual like this is to have information handy which will help you with those questions that you don’t already have an answer to.  Since the whole exam is about working problems, you need to have sample problems to pull from.

I figure the best way to show you how to build one of your own is to walk you through my manual.

Cheat sheets

Some cheat sheets you'll have to create yourself, others you can find online.

Some cheat sheets you’ll have to create yourself, others you can find online.

The first little part of my manual began with a couple of great cheat sheets.  For me (being an EE), that was a couple of pages dealing with single and three phase power systems and per-unit calculations.  These had no examples on them; rather they focused on the fundamentals of all of electrical engineering.

Given enough time and focus, most problems related to your specific discipline should be able to be solved with the use of these pages.

For mechanical engineers maybe this is a HVAC and refrigeration sheet with all of the formulas and key terms.  For structural engineers maybe a sheet on the fundamentals of structural mechanics going over bending, shear, and axial moments and stresses.   You know your discipline a lot better than I do, and I’m sure you know what would be beneficial.

Quick reference sheets

Are you planning on bringing other reference manuals with you to the exam?  Maybe some old college textbooks, that PPI reference manual I told you to get (yes, you really need to shell out $300 for it), or code references?

For this next section, I took the indexes from these references and put them directly into the manual.  This allowed me to avoid having to shuffle books if I didn’t have the answers to whichever problem handy in my manual. I was able to easily grab whichever book was needed and turn right to the page I need.  Let’s face it, when you’ve only got an average of 6 minutes to solve problems, the precious seconds saved add up quick.

If I had it to do over again, I’d have taken all of the indexes and arranged them in a single index so that I wouldn’t have to flip through four different indexes each time I needed them.

Practice problems

This is the layout that worked well for me, one problem per page.

This is the layout that worked well for me, one problem per page.

This is the crux of your manual and it should take up the vast majority of space.  For me, it was 95% of what was in my 3” thick notebook.

To start filling in this area you need to know what sort of problems you’ll be facing on the exam.

Luckily the NCEES people are nice enough to give you that information.  You see, your peers want you to succeed, they’re handing you the key provided you’re smart enough to do your research.

So now you should gather an alphabetic divider, and start finding some materials which are relevant to the breakdown above.

For example, if I was taking the Mechanical Thermal and Fluids exam, and I was trying to find information relative to this portion:

Thermal Exam Study Requirements

Thermal Exam Study Requirements

I’d just go down the list and do a quick Google search for each of the items listed.  The first one would return me a Google page like this:

Thermodynamic Cycle Search Results

Thermodynamic Cycle Search Results

Obviously I’m not going to be bringing Wikipedia articles with me to my PE exam, so as you can see I went to the first link under the images.

This pdf was a 7-page excerpt which was well written.  It has diagrams to explain some of the basics, an explanation of the principles and various well-known cycles, and even a lot of the equations that might be needed to work a problem.

This is a perfect addition to the manual you’re creating, time to move on to the next topic.

Doing all of this should take you under 10 hours. Those other 10 hours will be spent over the course of you taking 3-4 practice exams.

So you’ve got a basic manual, now what?

It’s time to start working problems.

If you struggle and don’t know the answer, that’s fine.  Work through the exam with the manuals you have.  Use the same calculator that you’re taking to the exam.  Put your earplugs in and leave your phone somewhere else.  Make this as close to the exam settings you’re going to be under as you can.

It’s been a long time since you last took a test.  It won’t be easy the first couple of times.  Put on a timer and see how many problems you can get in a 4 hour session.

Work out each of the problems you go through on a single sheet of paper.

When you finish the exam (and only then), go ahead and grade yourself.  As you’re doing so, if you missed a question pick out a fresh piece of paper and rework it leaning on the solution manual as needed.

On the top right corner of each of the 40 problems you just worked out and have correctly answered, classify the question in a different color pen than you used to work the problem.

Now add them to your manual.

If you do this for each of the exams that you take, you’ll have built up quite a knowledge base and have a bunch of example problems to assist you in the exam.

With your very own Google manual built, the test should be a cake walk.

Best of luck, and be sure to let me know how it goes.

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11 Comments

  • Reply Frankie Greco August 15, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    Hi There,

    I’m preparing to take the Power PE Exam in October. It isn’t required for my job, just doing it. I work for the Electric Utility, but my role is with customer side equipment so I’m familiar with the NEC. I picked up the Graffeo book (some colleagues recommended it), Camera, Blcakburn (Protective Relays), Electromechanical Energy Devices and Power Systems (College), 2014 NEC, NESC (latest) and some other information (ANSI and IEEE standards). I wanted your opinion on some of the sample exams. The Graffeo sample test seems pretty good, NCEES and Complex Imaginary. Would you recommend segmenting topic related sample problems together to avoid wasting time searching during the exam? I know the NEC questions could be ALL over the place, so I may work them first (or last) not sure. Even for someone like myself whom is familiar with the NEC …. it’s like a Chinese crossword puzzle. Could use your advice on a good relaying book/reference. The Blackburn book is good, but not a good quick reference. My opinion of the Camera book is it’s pretty much worthless outside maybe a formula here and there. Not a whole lot of value here. The $98 I spent on the Graffeo book is well worth it. Thanks in advance for the assistance … working towards 100 hours just before the exam. Been out of school for 16 years. Hoping it’s enough time.

    Regards,

    Frankie Greco

    • Reply Skye Coleman August 29, 2015 at 10:06 am

      Frankie,

      I would highly recommend grouping of example problems that have been worked out in your reference manual. I used an alphabetic divider and chose a single word or group of words to group problems and quick reference sheets under those dividers. I found that provided quick access when needed while working problems later.

      I can’t really comment on the Graffeo book (though I appreciate the input, I’ll check it out), but I would highly recommend the John Camara Power Reference Manual for the PE exam this truly was one of my most used references. You’ve got quite a few references already, and I think you may want to cut that down as you take many of the practice exams. I took a couple of text books from my time in college with me as well (I’ll be posting the exact ones on Monday), but limited my references to 5. I would caution taking much more, unless you’re highly familiar with the material in each of them and can get to that info quickly.

      As for practice exams, I took 4-5 before I took the test. A few came directly from one of my professors, but the ones that I got the most out of were directly from the NCEES. I’ve heard the 6-min books actually are a lot harder than the actual test problems.

      Best of luck,
      Skye

  • Reply May August 19, 2015 at 7:21 pm

    When you build your reference manual would you recommend a tab for each bullet point or just the main topics?

    • Reply Skye Coleman August 29, 2015 at 9:55 am

      May, I actually utilized only the alphabetic dividers and didn’t sub-tab individual points in the guide. I found this still allowed me enough time to flip through to the different sections and look up the specific type of examples I was looking for. I thought that more tabs would make things more difficult.

      Now I would say that if while taking your practice exams over the course of the next few weeks you find yourself continually turning to a certain section of your manual or one of your references… certainly tab that.

      Best of luck! Be sure to let me know how you do.

  • Reply Alex October 22, 2015 at 3:24 am

    Hi Skye,

    I came across your website after googling the topic “ncees power pe exam passing score”. I must say you do have some great tips.

    I have the Power Exam in Oct 2015 and I have been using the PPI2Pass Reference Manual as my go-to book which I will bring along with the NEC and NESC code books. I am wondering if you are allowed to bring the PPI2Pass Power Sample Exams and the NCEES PE Practice Exam books as reference materials? They are bound and the NCEES site does not mention any books you can’t take in. If not then I’ll have to write down a lot of questions and solutions manually which will take quite a while then put them in a 3-ring binder.

    Thanks in advance for your advice.

    Alex

    • Reply Skye Coleman October 23, 2015 at 7:58 am

      Hi Alex,

      I don’t think there’s any limit on taking exam answer booklets into the test. Many people I know have done specifically that.

      That said, I never found taking a non-sorted book into an exam as the best way to actually look up answers quickly when needed on a timed test. Here’s my recommendation (that I did with one of the practice test books I didn’t get a chance to take) – scan in the question and answer, put them on a single sheet of paper with a title for the topic at the top right corner, then put that into your 3-ring binder. It’ll take you about 2-3 hours for a single test, but it’s worth it to even save a few mins in the test. Every second will count.

      Hope this helps, and best of luck!
      Cheers,

      Skye

  • Reply Kate December 17, 2015 at 1:00 pm

    Hi Skye,
    I was hoping you could provide me with a list of PE practice exam books that you purchased to study from? I purchased the NCEES practice exam book, but I know I will most likely want to work through more problems than what is offered in that guide. Any tips would be appreciated!

    • Reply Skye Coleman December 17, 2015 at 8:42 pm

      Hi Kate,

      I had some books that I received from the class I took, but there are plenty of others out there. You can find one from PPI here. You said you already have this one from NCEES, but there are a few others you can find like this one here.

  • Reply Destroying the Myth of Not Enough PE Study TimeEngineered Path December 22, 2015 at 8:02 am

    […] If you listen to the traditional PE exam study time guidelines, they say you’ll need to study just over 300 hours.  Personally, I believe that most people can pass with a lot less studying but by concentrating a 100 hours where it really counts. […]

  • Reply Malik Abu asal May 9, 2016 at 4:21 am

    Hey ,
    Great Article,
    i subscribed to tour list to get the PE schedule but i didn’t receive anything yet, how could i get the eBook.

    • Reply Skye Coleman May 28, 2016 at 9:56 am

      Malik, check your spam filter. Gmail sometimes catches the automatically sent emails and people have trouble finding them. If they’re not there, check the promotions tab (or just search engineeredpath) and you should turn them up. Thanks!

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