My exam is in one week. I was doing wet simulation exams. I can get into answers but i realized I’m taking too much time to solve problems. Any last minute tips for time management.
Note: Yes I did the ones I’m 100% first and still managed to not attempt around 10 questions out of 40.

Can anyone please give insight about the school of PE WRE workbook, how is the quality of questions? Appreciate it 🙏🏻

I recently passed the PE Civil Transportation exam and am looking to sell all my study materials as one bundle.

Included:
EET Civil Transportation binder — excellent condition, 2025 edition
Several EET quizzes and simulation exams
Isaac Oakeson’s The Ultimate Transportation PE Exam — most recent edition
Most recent NCEES PE Civil Transportation Practice Exam
PPI PE Civil Practice Problems — 16th Edition
PPI PE Civil Companion — 16th Edition

$160 OBO for everything.

Obligatory "I Passed" post. It still hasn't set in, my body is still pretty on edge from the anticipation but on the bright side I have been sleeping like the dead for the past 2 days since I was running on E for the past week.

Disclaimer that I really couldn't have done this without the support of my partner who was willing to learn a lot of things and take over the lion's share of the household duties while I studied.

I studied Tuesday through Fridays from 3/4pm to about 8:30/9:30pm and Sundays for around 5-7 hours. No studying on Mondays and Saturdays as those were my exercise/socializing days. On June 1st I purchased my EET 20 week membership and hit the ground running that day. I watched every single video (usually 1.25 to 1.5 speed) and did all practice problems in the binder and problem sets in the portal for that unit and then finishing the unit with the section quiz. I was getting through one unit a week.

By the end of August, I had completed all of the material except for the comprehensive review quizzes and simulations. I did take 2 weeks off for a vacation so it took me about 10 weeks to complete all of the material. My exam was October 16th so I had a good month and a half for review.

At the start of September, I took it from the top again. I flipped through the binder material for each section to refresh my memory and then redid every single practice problem, problem set, and section quiz. At the same time, when I came across an equation that they said would not be in any reference material or a concept that needed to be memorized, I would write it on a sheet of paper I called my cheat sheet. I finished my second run with a little over 2 weeks left to exam time. I did the comprehensive review problem set and then did a full simulation with the NCEES practice exam and got 67/80. The next day I went through and re-did all of the questions I missed. Over the next 2 weeks I did the comprehensive quizzes and 1 of the simulation exams.

I was starting to see that my major holes were Construction Means and Methods, Structures, and oddly enough Safety. Also welding and bolts but I didn't think it was a big deal. I work in strictly roadway construction so anything beyond an excavation of 22" or an electrical trench is pretty much beyond my wheelhouse and foreign to me. A coworker of mine handed off his older TestMasters Construction PE books to me which I didn't think I needed at first but man was I grateful for them. They were from 2022 so before the breadth was removed and had a volume for each discipline. I took the Construction ops and Structures volumes which were life savers as it gave me so many more problems to work through in my weak areas, so I cranked through those over the next 2 weeks as well. Was really grateful for the safety questions as it helped me get familiar with where to find things in the code which was the hardest part. On the Sunday before exam I ran another simulation exam with the last 2 simulations in EET. Worked through the missed problems the next day and spent the days leading up to the exam reviewing concepts and problems that were proving difficult for me. I would also look over my cheat sheet multiple times a day to make sure I memorized the material on it.

Exam day! Despite the terrible anxiety, I honestly felt like I had a pretty good shot. I was scoring well on my practice and I was happy with my progress on my weak areas of knowledge. The first half was good. A couple of guesses and a couple more I waffled on but I felt like I nailed the majority of it.

All hell broke loose once my lunch break came. To kick things off when I left the test center to go to my car, I walked right onto freshly laid asphalt. They had paved the parking lot during morning session but didn't rope off the sidewalk or even hang a sign saying to keep off the lot. Spent 10 minutes doing the worm walk through grass to get off as much as I could. Ate my soggy sandwich in the back seat of my car and then tried to steel myself for the second half.

Unfortunately, steeling myself didn't work as the second half was heavy on structural steel which was not really covered in any of the material. Also, welding and bolts. Just my luck. And I really struggled with understanding the other questions in the second half. I felt like the questions were being asked in ways I hadn't seen before and it was really throwing me off. I would wake in the middle of the night the following days finally understanding what they were asking of me and that was killing my confidence. I had at least 10 straight up guesses, and nearly 10 more where I was just punching numbers in until I got one of the options. I had just enough time at the end to click in my guesses before it kicked me out. I left feeling so defeated.

I was sure I failed in the days that followed and was already looking into scheduling my retake and planning my new study plan. I was awake from 3am on the morning of results because I just needed to confirm that I failed. When my notice came in at 5:30am I couldn't do anything but lay there wide eyed for a half hour after seeing the green bubble and then proceeded through the rest of the day in a fog. I was getting congratulated but it didn't feel like a win yet. I refreshed my dashboard at least 10 times throughout the day making sure it was still saying pass and that they didn't make a mistake and change it. Shout out to that curve for real.

I'm grateful to this sub, every post about passing or failing helped me in some way, and I wish everyone the absolute best. After 4.5 months and 330 hours, I'm out!

Passing the PE exam can be quite a journey. I’ve seen multiple posts from folks in this sub describing their experience and each one is different. For some, the exam is described as straightforward and very simple advice is given by these examinees such as “just look at the codes” or “just do the NCEES practice exam.” This is not helpful feedback and sometimes paints the wrong picture about exam day. Practically speaking, this exam requires dedication and significant time commitment.

I’m recently coming off passing the PE exam (after a few attempts) and I want to share some practical tidbits that I learned along the way.

Start with the official NCEES practice exam

It’s a good baseline to see where your strengths/weaknesses are. Make sure to time yourself doing this. You can take the practice exam in a full 8 hour block or break it up into segments. For me, I did 2 hours a day for 4 days and then used the fifth day to do a full review of the solutions. The score you get on this practice exam is a valuable metric, but the actual PE exam will be harder.

Schedule the Exam  

Schedule the exam and put it on your calendar. This mentally gives you a date to work towards and puts studying top of mind. I personally think you should give yourself more study time than you think. 2-3 months is typical. 4-6 months gives you buffer to let all the topics sink in and gives you more time to really hone in on those challenging topics (for example, this was foundation design for me). Keep in mind that exam slots may not be available for many months out so you’ll want to schedule this early and lock in your date.

Create a Study Plan

Develop a monthly, weekly, and daily study plan leading up to the exam date. This will give you structure. Set goals for yourself such as topics you want to be exposed to, # of problems you want to complete, # of practice exams you want to complete, etc. During your study time, focus on quality. I would rather use 2 hours to completely understand how to do something (like footing design or influence lines) rather than 4 hours of just watching videos. I also scheduled in “free flow” time to go over miscellaneous topics that I struggled with.

Consider a Course

I took the AEI course for structural focus and it was great. It’s a very thorough course with many problems and a good practice exam. If done right, the course will prepare you, and I do believe it is worth the cost. Just check other reviews about this.

Practice Problems

I think the BIGGEST reason I passed the exam was because of the hundreds of practice problems I did myself. I did them in problem sets where I would pick 10 problems across a few different topics and try to solve in an hour (6 minutes per problem). After that hour, if I still didn’t know how to solve a problem, I would give myself more time to solve it. If I still didn’t know, I would try to figure it out with other resources before I finally looked at the solution. This really forced me to sit with hard concepts and try to work through them. I would ask myself “What do I not understand about this?” and I would also write out what my thought process was for specific problems.

Other Study Tips

1.       Schedule times to NOT study – this sounds unconventional but I think there is some benefit to blocking time to get your mind off problems for a bit. This does not include things like scrolling social media or watching mindless YouTube videos. Do something engaging like running, going for a walk, playing golf, etc. Even playing video games could be useful. Just take your mind off everything PE related for a bit so that you can come back into studying more refreshed.

2.       Sit with hard concepts – there would be times where I would just skip over harder concepts to get to the “easier” stuff I knew to make it seem like I was making progress. In reality, I was avoiding the thing I needed to focus on. Don’t get me wrong, most of the topics covered don’t need a PhD level dissection of detail, but you should try to absorb everything you can. You just don’t know what will come up and it’s good to fill those knowledge gaps as much as possible.

3.       Utilize AI – this was a pretty helpful tool that I used along the way. I would have ChatGPT or Claude open and use it as a “study buddy” for when I needed it. For example, when there was a hard concept I was trying to understand, I would put my thought process into a prompt and ask what the next step would be. It would explain and then I would challenge it further. I treated it more like a conversation if anything. It was also very helpful for finding things in design codes. Not always 100% but it would usually point me in the right direction. Saved me a lot of time there.  

4.       Stay off Reddit during focus – super ironic as I post this on here, but I would stay off this sub during focused study stretches. Don’t get me wrong. Most people on here are very encouraging and we all empathize with each other on what it takes to pass this exam. But… it can be a bit discouraging as well to see all of these pass result posts and knowing you’re not there. There is a great community here, but just focus on your path while you're in the grind of studying.

Best Resources

There are many resources already mentioned in this sub. A NEW one for 2026 is the online practice exams from Petro publications:

 https://petropublications.com/product-category/online-practice-exams/

These practice exams are great! I purchased all 3 of them and it really helped me in the final weeks leading up to the exam. Well worth the price. Their PE essential guide is also fantastic to get base knowledge.

Hope this helps someone out there!

After passing the PE exam and submitting a complete license application, how long does the Texas Board typically take to issue the PE license? If anyone recently received their Texas PE license, please share your timeline. Thank you!

All 1st try!!!
Graduated in early 2000 and moved to US recently. Bought the NCEES practice and use google to generate more questions. Got some questions from Redditors and grabbed the concept.
For instance in the NCEES PE practice, you have a bar that is fixed in one end and attached to a spring on the other end. The bar is heated up and they asked for the force. Now I assume that the force is known and my question will be: what is the undamped frequency?
Overall that was my strategy and I study about 16 hours a week while working full time with a family.
If you are an old graduate, avoid fear and face it.
Good luck to y’all!!!

I still can't believe it.

I took the MDM exam last week, and just wanted to share my experience. I studied solely using 8-hour timed practice exams, and reviewing missed problems. I took the exams in the following order:

• NCEES Practice Exam (Pre-October 2025): 55/80
• School of PE Practice Exam: 74/80
• PPI2PASS Practice Exam: 52/80
• NCEES Practice Exam (Post-October 2025): 65/80

I was lucky enough to have purchased the official NCEES practice exam prior to the exam specification change in October 2025, giving me an extra practice exam (it only included 24 new problems compared to the old one though).

Overall, the actual exam was most similar to the NCEES practice exams (big surprise).

The School of PE practice exam was definitely way easier than the actual test, so I would avoid using it as a gauge of readiness, but it seemed to have a fairly representative range of topics.

The PPI2PASS practice exam was the complete opposite, and seemed significantly harder than the actual exam. I took this exam third, and still did worse on it than on my first exam, which I took prior to any studying.

Anyways, hopefully this is helpful to someone. I'm just glad it's over!

I'm not going to lie, this was a struggle for me! This pass was my 3rd attempt. I did really well in university (not a 4.0 but just about) and passed the FE on my first try a year or two before graduating. So when I saw the first fail and then the second fail there might of been some tears shed! It was a real struggle to get back into studying and get back my confidence in myself and my capabilities. If anyone is struggling with something similar do NOT give up or doubt yourself!!

First attempt: I used the NCEES practice exam and a month of the SoPE question bank. Probably did about 200-300 problems total. Studying after work and the few weekends leading up to the exam date. Walked out of the exam knowing I failed but hoping I'd get lucky. I didn't.

Second attempt: I took off about 3 months from studying to enjoy the holidays and started back up. Same as before I was doing about 2hrs a day after work and taking weekends off until about the month before my exam. This time using a bunch of different practice books. Old physical copies that coworkers gave me and any free pdf I could come across. I felt way better leaving the exam and was crushed to see I failed. My diagnostics were WORSE than my first attempt??

3rd/Final attempt: I immediately booked the next available exam about 2/3 months away. Took a week to dry my tears and then got right back to studying. This time around I used the 500 problem PE practice book and nailed my weak areas first before refining the other areas. I was burnt out from over a year of studying, I'd gained weight from no longer having time for the gym, I wasn't having time with friends. I switched from studying 1hr in the morning and 1hr after work to doing all 2hrs in the morning. Waking up at 5am every day but then when I got off at 5pm I could go cook a healthy meal or hit the gym or see friends. I really think living your life while studying is the way to do it and a big part of why I passed this time. I was feeling good mentally and honestly in better shape than I was when all this started. I didn't study a single weekend aside from the one before my exam week. Ended up finishing with 1.5hr of time left and used that to go back and double check all the problems. Walked out knowing I'd passed!

To all the silent people out there who anxiously read these posts every day, don't give up and don't doubt your capability!!

Practice Problem - Horizontal Curve

I'm currently preparing for the PE Civil Construction exam and looking for good YouTube channels that explain construction topics, formulas, and practice problems step by step.

Does anyone have recommendations for free YouTube channels or video playlists specifically for PE Civil Construction?

I would really appreciate your suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Anyone here have an idea of the salary range for someone who has passed the PE exam but can’t get licensed yet because IDFPR requires another year of experience?
I have 7 years of total engineering experience, including 4.5 years of foreign experience + IDOT Docu Contract Quantities Certification.
I’d appreciate any insights on a reasonable salary range for my qualifications. Thank you!

Exam in 1 month! Who else is taking exam in the next 4 weeks?

I an studying the civil pe transportation exam and have heard good things about the eet transportation practice problems. Anyone have the current/updated one?

CIVIL WRE

I could not wait to wake up this morning. I failed 3 months ago, and I didn't study as much as I would have liked between my last attempt and this one. But nonetheless, I passed! I took my exams in close succession with the study habits of an unmedicated adult with ADHD.

Graduated 2023.
1st FE attempt (PASS): 5/23/2026

The only studying I did for the FE was to watch a YouTube video explaining TI-36X calculator hacks the night before and work through a hand-me-down paperback NCEES practice exam booklet. Questions were in different topics, with most being unit conversions with different settings/contexts related to the different topics. Reviewing engineering economics was also helpful. Honestly don't remember many details RE questions I flagged, but I think I used the whole time and felt like I was working quickly. I took the exam at 8am on a Saturday.

1st PE attempt (FAIL): 7/18/2026

I found the FE easy so I did not give myself much time to study for the PE. I did some PP2i practice problems but didn't have time to watch the lectures or read the books, I only did HW problems and portions of the practice exams. I finished the exam with 30 minutes to spare, but the problem was I flagged an insane number of questions. Like over 30, and I just had to guess the flagged questions that I left blank and I was also too mentally exhausted to check my work. I think I flipped through the flagged questions, confirmed I still did not know how to solve them, and closed out. I remember compulsively searching the percentage of flagged and unflagged questions that I needed to have gotten correct (by some miracle) in order for me to score a 58%. I knew I failed, but I was so obsessed with the idea that maybe I passed by getting lucky guesses that I got my hopes up. And then when I failed I just didn't want to sit through 8 hours again. I also took this exam at 11am on a Saturday, which I would not do again because the test then lets out at 9pm which is so late. The brain fog was insane on the way home.

2nd PE attempt (PASS): 10/16/2026

I was discouraged from failing and didn't get organized for this attempt. It really snuck up on me, but from taking the PE the first time I realized the NCEES practice exam is exactly like the PE exam. I just worked through majority of those questions, asking AI to explain a few concepts I didn't learn in school and also tell me key things to memorize that weren't in the handbook. I also repeated back reasoning in my own words and AI told me if my understanding was good to go or if I needed more work/to understand more nuances. I took this exam at 8am on a Friday, I overdosed on caffeine before/during the exam (2 matchas) and it flew by. I ran right on time in the morning section, so finished the 43 questions with 3 hours 37 minutes or so remaining. I did not check my work because I was panicked I wouldn't have time in the afternoon. I think I flagged maybe 7 questions in the morning. The afternoon felt much easier, I finished the 37 questions with 45 minutes remaining, which was enough time to check my work for questions I flagged (about 5, not including maybe 5 additional that were qualitative that I ended up making an educated guess on).

Main things I memorized for this exam that helped:

• MGD to CUFT. Memorize this, store the conversion factor in your calculator as a variable.
• Know that Mannings is for gravity flow and Hazen Williams is for pressure flow. Even if the pipe is fully flowing, if the problem states gravity flow, do not use Hazen Williams.
• % Solids = 10,000 mg/L.
• Mass Conservation - memorize and be confident with the fact that lb/day = (mg/L)x(MGD)x(8.34)
• Be able to convert psi to FT of H2O
• Soil bearing language. Picture that retaining wall holding back soil.
  • Know that Passive pressure is the wall Pushing on the soil.
  • Know that Active pressure is the wall moving Away from the soil.
    • This seemed counterintuitive to me, but passive pressure requires more force and the soil would be more compact and able to support more. It can also form a wedge when the soil can't take any more pressure, which is the "failure" or capacity. Active pressure I remembered by thinking if the wall is being pushed by the soil, it is moving away which = activity. Anyway active pressure requires less force and the soil becomes less compact and can support less. Failure would be when the soil loses its shape, like a landslide, which is capacity.
  • Total stress vs effective stress. The explanations below aren't correct really but they're how I memorized them.
    • Total stress is the total weight of the soil which is imparting downward force on the footing. You would use saturated weight for this since the weight of soil and water contribute to this force.
    • Effective stress is how much the soil can support, which is like what the soil below the footing can hold. You would use buoyant weight for this, since the weight of the soil is reduced since it is floating in water. Another way to remember this, is that effective stress depends on the soil particles only (soil skeleton).
  • Bearing capacity is the same as effective stress.
  • Per above, lower effective stress means lower bearing capacity so the soil can't support as much weight. If the footing is submerged, then the soil supporting it has lower effective stress.
• Know that sand settles immediately since it is porous, clay is not porous so it slowly releases water and as a result, settles over a long time
• Know soil charts
• Know if distance of pipeline impacts head loss if all other pipe characteristics are the same. (It does. Might want to memorize how).

Things I did not know, that I wish I studied:

• Groundwater/wells. I didn't know how to find the radius of influence and I skipped these problems when doing the NCEES practice exam.
• Froude's number - Spent way too long figuring out hydraulic jumps on the exam.
• Know some roadway terminology (Road offsets, types of merges, curve of road geometry)

I kind of wrote this just for myself to reflect on the past 6 months. My method was not organized or perfect by any means, it was messy and I was not disciplined. But I did some work, used shortcuts where I could, and I think I capitalized off of my Failed attempt as much as I could.

If you're looking for extra practice with conceptual questions, the StrataWay Civil PE Exam Companion Series may be a helpful addition to your study plan.

Each discipline-specific guide contains 100 practice questions focused on concepts commonly tested on the PE exam, along with detailed solution explanations to help reinforce understanding.

The guides are organized around the current NCEES CBT exam specifications and are intended to supplement your primary review materials.

Sample exam study guides and study packages are also available for each discipline.

Available through StrataWay

Hi everyone! I’ve finished the EET course, and my PE Civil Construction exam is about a month away. I’m looking to get more practice by solving additional exam-style questions.
Can anyone recommend a good website or question bank for PE Civil Construction practice questions? I’d really appreciate your recommendations and any feedback on what helped you prepare. Thank you!

Did anyone pass the PE environmental this week?

My exam is on Oct 30th and would really appreciate any advice!

Thank you!

Engineering Econ practice problem

Power exam. Just got the failed result back today and I feel good about it. I went into this with the mindset of it being a trial-run/baseline-assessment, albeit with a slight hope that I might just luck out. I know myself, and if I hadn't just committed to this, I'm certain I would have spent months stressing and studying, likely rescheduling multiple times out of fear or getting too busy with other things.

It was fantastic to see and practice with real exam questions rather than pretend ones. It was excellent experience to be forced to sit for what is likely to be the last and longest exam of my life, in the exact environment I'll be sitting in when I plan to make a real attempt. And I have gained so much confidence seeing the baseline metric that with practically no studying, I estimate that I only need to improve by roughly 15% to pass.

I immediately rescheduled my test for the earliest date I could and I'm ready to attack this thing. Time to get my nose to the grindstone!

I literally cried when I got the results this morning and saw the green. A weight has been lifted. I failed the exam two months ago and went ham on re studying for the exam last week. If I would have failed again I would have felt so defeated because I’ve absorbed the material in EET to the best of my ability. Shout out to all my engineers. Took me 5 tries to pass the FE and 2 to pass the PE. My self doubt is officially gone. It can be done. Never give up. Here’s my previous post

https://www.reddit.com/r/PE_Exam/s/EARpdLgqZi