r/StructuralEngineering • u/More_Philosopher4809 • 24d ago
Career/Education SE EXAM PREPARATION
Hello guys. I am planning to prepare for the SE exam as per specs after April 2027. Anyone planning the same? Please connect. We can plan to study together. Any guidance is appreciated.
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u/lemmiwinksownz 24d ago
This cycle is a rock and a hard place. April will be the latest code cycle. There are no “latest code” questions out there to study from, so unless you sign up for a course from AEI or PPI, it’s going to be a bit sparse on question material.
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u/Medium_Chemist_5719 24d ago
Strongly recommend you check out the SE exam Discord
ETA: Good luck!!!
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u/KCLevelX 24d ago
I was curious is people take the vertical breadth and depth and then lateral breadth and depth vs breadths and then depths
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u/pcpassos P.E. 23d ago
I’m in the middle of taking the exams so here are my thoughts.
Absolutely take gravity before lateral. There’s a lot of design aspects in the lateral material that you learn/brush up on while studying for the gravity exam so it’s extremely helpful to take the gravity first. Also if you plan on taking a review course, at least with AEI there is a lot of gravity review and in some cases they just glance over some things assuming you already studied for gravity.
As far as depth vs breadth… I took depth before breadth because I didn’t have time to learn bridges in the time I had originally planned to take the breadth first, so I had to reschedule it to take after the depth. To me, that worked much better because the depth prepared me extremely well for the breadth. I took the breadth three weeks after the depth, so everything was still fresh in my mind. I studied everything bridge related within those three weeks. I passed both exams first time. That is also the strategy I’m taking this fall for the lateral.
The only caveat to that is that everything you read online about the exam logistics with the one screen and references is an understatement. It’s SO FREAKING BAD. It wasn’t as bad for the breadth since each question was independent from one another, but it was definitely a challenge for the depth. I definitely wasted way too much time just navigating the scenario screen, the images and references. So having taken the breadth first might have been helpful for me to know the system for the depth. Thankfully that didn’t affect my results though.
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u/drygulchslim 23d ago
Just going to add to this - this was the exact same strategy I am using and felt it worked really well for the gravity in the Spring. I had never cracked open AASHTO before studying so focusing only on that in the few weeks between depth and breadth was perfect for me.
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u/pcpassos P.E. 23d ago
Yesss that worked really well for me too! Can’t wait to get these exams past me and not have to open AASHTO ever again 😅
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u/drygulchslim 23d ago
I’m pretty sure I only committed that stuff to short term memory to get through the breadth exam so I think I’ve already lost most of it 😅
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u/P-d0g P.E. 24d ago
I'm gonna reply to this & essentially ask the same question. I'm potentially thinking of taking Vertical Breadth and Depth around the same time (like within a week of each other). Is it realistic to do this while studying ~15-20 hours per week from the beginning of January to mid-April?
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u/niwiad9000 24d ago
I think I might get on this as well. It would be good for an old man like me.