Supplemental Study Materials while using Amberbooks for PPD/PDD?
Hey Everyone! I am concurrently studying for PPD and PDD using Amberbooks as my primary study resource. In the past for my prior 4 exams I used more traditional sources such as Building Codes Illustrated, IBC, PPI/ Ballast 5.0 Exam Review, Hyperfine, Site Planning and Design, etc.
This time around due to the sheer volume of information, I wanted to avoid reading 1000+ pages for pertainent information and have heard many people have success with Amberbooks. However others note to use as only a supplementary resource. Thoughts on how to integrate other study materials in with Amberbooks? How heavily can I rely on just this resource?
Thanks!
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Hi Taylor! Congrats on your progress! I passed all the exams using Amberbook almost exclusively, however for the last 2 (PPD and PDD) I found it really useful to add on Elif's quizzes (arequestions.com). Amberbook is incredibly informative but since it's structured as a "learn it all at once" course I used Elif's quizzes to focus in on the topics more specific to each exam. It honestly was a complete game changer and made my time studying feel more productive and organized. Her questions package allows you to do it as timed full exams or smaller 20 question quizes and I did them all as smaller quizzes and essentially used them as study guide to look up more information on different topics.
So my process was
1. Do all of Amberbook! This is what gives you the foundation. Flashcards chapters for PPD and PDD are super important too, (I would skip the professional practice section if you are short on time, it's useful for these exams but more relative to the exams you already passed)
2. After I finished amberbook I started taking Elif's 20 question quiz one at a time, giving myself a day or so in between quizzes to look up all the resources she references in her explanation answers. Her answers reference the traditional sources (Standard graphics, architect's companion etc), giving you the exact pages she got the answer from. It's a great way to get right to the paragraph you need to be reading rather than having to go through the 1000+ pages! I also would read some thing in Elif's quizzes and go back to amberbook to rewatch/read that topic.
3. I took 2 practice exams, one after I finished Amberbook and one about a week before taking the exams
One other thing I'll say, I also started by studying PPD and PDD together but soon realized the content was too much and personally I felt that while the two exams orbit the same topics, the thinking behind the two exams is very different ( one is very technical, the other is pretty conceptual). So I gave myself some room to get exam specific before each exam.
Ultimately, I ended up doing all of amber book in one shot, but just the PPD flashcards, then did the Elif quizzes for PPD, took the practice exams and took the real exam. THEN I started amberbook PDD flashcards, the Elif quizzes for PDD, took the practice exams for PDD and took that exam. I gave myself about 3 weeks in between the two exams. Hope this helps!
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