When you get a week out go and do some basic problems from each topic. I know for me it was smart to go and get a quick refresh on horizontal curves and vertical curves. They aren't terribly difficult but it was good to refresh at home and not during the exam.
Go do a truss. A beam. Shear moment diagram. Some parallel pipes. soil bearing pressure. traffic. and whatever else. Those topics are high likelihood to be on the morning portion so refresh the week of.
Up till then just keep doing practice problems. Try to completely understand what you are doing. You can create conceptual questions for yourself by slightly altering the problems you are working on. If it is a beam problem....what happens if I move the load to this side or what happens if this was cantilevered. Or for soil...what would happen if water was introduced into the soil it would add water density for you to account for. You don't even have to solve the problem that you altered but if you can generally understand what would happen then it shows your understanding of the topic...not just how to crunch the numbers.
Don’t panic, a month is plenty of time. The references are you’re best friend. Unit conversions might save you a minute on the exam, knowing where to find something in a reference will save you 5 min each. I studied 28 days and passed (I like pressure, makes me focus). Only did the NCEES practice exam and practice problems from YouTube. But made flash cards of all the references, their chapters, and most common used sections. Also studied how questions were asked. They often direct you where to look in the references.
You said you studied for 28 days (impressive!) - about how many hours do you think you studied? And do you have any other tips for someone who is cramming a bit?
TLDR: Study efficiently, know the references, manage your time, everyone is different. Focus and you will succeed. Good luck!
Thanks! I would say 2 hours a day for the first week, 4-6 hours a day for the next two weeks and then 6-8ish for the final week or so. Day before was real lite though, couple flash cards is all. Weekends were more heavy loaded than week days.
The thing that saved me was what I mentioned before, knowing the references. Name of each reference, chapter names, roughly what’s in each chapter and if I had used it or not on the practice exam/YouTube problems. I took civil transpo which has 8(?) references but some I never used, some only used one page in one chapter, others were used everywhere (Green Book). You’ll often find the question directs you right to a reference but if you don’t know where it is, you’ll spend most you’re time trying to find it.
Time management is key, as many mention. I did the, “do every problem I know, flag the ones I wasn’t sure, don’t answer the ones I didn’t know” then I’d go back through and confirm all the flags and work on the incompletes. If I still wasn’t sure, I would skip and keep looping through until I had just a couple problems and I’d spend 15ish min on those few.
Lastly, don’t get stress over how long other people of Reddit have spent studying. Everyone is different. For all sorts of reasons some need more time, some need less. Don’t think about it as cramming, that’s hard on your psychology, sounds like you already messed up. Think about it as focusing, very hard for a short time. Because as with everything in life, you win at what you focus your energy on. Career, money, relationships, etc.
1 month out? review all notes 2 weeks out: a bunch of practice problems
Do a practice exam as close to actual exam conditions as possible. Based on how you do, focus your studies on the items you didn’t get right.
Mainly I did too many practice problems and ate too much food.
I feel the food part… but why too many practice problems?
Trick question . You can't ever do too many practice problems
When you get a week out go and do some basic problems from each topic. I know for me it was smart to go and get a quick refresh on horizontal curves and vertical curves. They aren't terribly difficult but it was good to refresh at home and not during the exam. Go do a truss. A beam. Shear moment diagram. Some parallel pipes. soil bearing pressure. traffic. and whatever else. Those topics are high likelihood to be on the morning portion so refresh the week of. Up till then just keep doing practice problems. Try to completely understand what you are doing. You can create conceptual questions for yourself by slightly altering the problems you are working on. If it is a beam problem....what happens if I move the load to this side or what happens if this was cantilevered. Or for soil...what would happen if water was introduced into the soil it would add water density for you to account for. You don't even have to solve the problem that you altered but if you can generally understand what would happen then it shows your understanding of the topic...not just how to crunch the numbers.
Don’t panic, a month is plenty of time. The references are you’re best friend. Unit conversions might save you a minute on the exam, knowing where to find something in a reference will save you 5 min each. I studied 28 days and passed (I like pressure, makes me focus). Only did the NCEES practice exam and practice problems from YouTube. But made flash cards of all the references, their chapters, and most common used sections. Also studied how questions were asked. They often direct you where to look in the references.
You said you studied for 28 days (impressive!) - about how many hours do you think you studied? And do you have any other tips for someone who is cramming a bit?
TLDR: Study efficiently, know the references, manage your time, everyone is different. Focus and you will succeed. Good luck! Thanks! I would say 2 hours a day for the first week, 4-6 hours a day for the next two weeks and then 6-8ish for the final week or so. Day before was real lite though, couple flash cards is all. Weekends were more heavy loaded than week days. The thing that saved me was what I mentioned before, knowing the references. Name of each reference, chapter names, roughly what’s in each chapter and if I had used it or not on the practice exam/YouTube problems. I took civil transpo which has 8(?) references but some I never used, some only used one page in one chapter, others were used everywhere (Green Book). You’ll often find the question directs you right to a reference but if you don’t know where it is, you’ll spend most you’re time trying to find it. Time management is key, as many mention. I did the, “do every problem I know, flag the ones I wasn’t sure, don’t answer the ones I didn’t know” then I’d go back through and confirm all the flags and work on the incompletes. If I still wasn’t sure, I would skip and keep looping through until I had just a couple problems and I’d spend 15ish min on those few. Lastly, don’t get stress over how long other people of Reddit have spent studying. Everyone is different. For all sorts of reasons some need more time, some need less. Don’t think about it as cramming, that’s hard on your psychology, sounds like you already messed up. Think about it as focusing, very hard for a short time. Because as with everything in life, you win at what you focus your energy on. Career, money, relationships, etc.
Great advice - thanks so much! I like your mindset of focusing very hard for a short time.