All Exams Passed on First Try (1 Year Total) Shareout

Hi everyone! 

I started my ARE journey about this time last year and the NCARB forum has been an invaluable resource as I was studying so I figured I would share my experience and my approach:

Test Taking Strategy

• I was told early on that Monday is the ideal test day of the week so that you can fully focus the weekend before on studying and taking practice questions. I would recommend the same.
• My approach to the exams was to blast through all of the questions all in one go and spend any remaining time double checking all the questions from the beginning. Know your physical limits though. If you will need a break halfway through the exam time, don’t try to muscle through it. And know that if you take a break, your questions will be locked. My first exam I thought I could run through all the questions, take a break, and go back to double check. Not the case (it was fine, but would’ve felt bad if it wasn’t fine). Also, before you start the exam, take note of your chair, keyboard, screen, and environment. It's going to be a while, so you might as well get comfortable. 
• The Whiteboard has tabs, so I typically tried to organize myself as I went through the exam:
• Tab 1: Any brute force memorization items to dump as soon as I get into the exam before I forget them. (ex. Condensing span length charts into strings of numbers, or condensed equations for building area/efficiency calculations)
• Tab 2: Any questions that might be answered by a reference in the case studies
• Tab 3: Any questions that had an arithmetic component, I would type out all of my work (ex. Q54: vinyl tile = 2*500=$1000, carpet =...). Yes, this takes more time, but when I went back to double check the questions, it saved me time trying to figure out how I got to the answer I picked.
• Use the highlight and strikethrough features, it helps to process the question and weed through all of the information and answer choices. For me, I would highlight while reading the question, and strikethrough answers that stood out as wrong to me. Process of elimination can be extremely helpful given how many of the questions and answers are formatted. 
• Great blog post from Hyperfine on how many questions you need to get right: https://hyperfinearchitecture.com/are-5-0-passing-scores/
• Basically, the passing score cut off is actually pretty low for all the exams and every question is one point, so don’t spend too much time on one question. If it’s not looking good for a question, stay calm (take a deep breath through your nose if you need to), put an answer down, and move on. You can come back and contemplate it later if you have extra time.

Study Strategy

• PcM, PjM, CE
• Read through Ballast Chapters
• Read through the main contracts (A101, B101, A201, C401) and glance at the others. You can watch the Schiff-Harden lectures, but I could not stay focused for the life of me. I ended up just running through the lecture slides and figured at that point I might as well read the contracts. Just download free versions of the contracts from the NCARB website and read through the big ones, it’ll save you time and it’s good to see it in a format similar to how it will look as a reference during the exam.
• Practice questions/exams + Focus on learning about weak points revealed by questions
• PA
• Read through Ballast Chapters
• Hyperfine Study Assignments: 
• https://hyperfine.teachable.com/p/pa-are-5-0-study-assignments
• I found it helpful to make flash cards related to each assignment so that I could review all the content in a shortened format. 
• Practice questions/exams + Focus on learning about weak points revealed by questions
• PPD + PDD: There’s conflicting opinions on this, but mine is that these exams are different enough that you shouldn’t study for them together. I would study for them individually and just enjoy the fact that you’ll be familiar with a lot of the content when you prepare for the other. As a gross oversimplification, PPD is more about selecting the right systems, and PDD is more about understanding how different systems work. 
• Desk Crits (see below) has a study plan I would recommend, but long story short, you can split the content by system type (Mechanical, Electrical, Structural, etc.) and focus your studying that way whichever resources you use.
• Brittany Haber has posted really great Gant charts that might be helpful if you don’t want to purchase Desk Crits:
• https://are5community.ncarb.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/21312760614295-PPD-PASS-STUDY-SOURCES-TIPS
• I spent an embarrassing amount of time planning my studying plan, I would recommend picking something and sticking to it. It's hard to know what's the most efficient study plan for you at the start, but you can adapt as you move through the content. Focus more on the information you aren't familiar with, and just keep moving.
• Hyperfine Study Assignments
• A heads up for these assignments, I think the content is really great and helpful, but I will warn you that these tripped me up a bit because there isn’t a great way to delineate PPD vs. PDD (unless there’s a unique content difference, like PDD including Specs whereas PPD doesn’t). Similar to the PA assignments, there are really great videos going through all of the assignments and explaining key concepts. And again, your experience may be different if you are doing the PPD/PDD exam studying at the same time. 
• https://hyperfinearchitecture.com/ppd/
• Practice questions/exams + Focus on learning about weak points revealed by questions

Resources

• Desk Crits: Recommended by a friend, pretty solid breakdown of all the exams, what resources you might need, what chapters of what resources to read, etc. I didn’t find out about it until PPD-PDD, but it seems to give a good study plan for all the exams. It also includes resource sheets to to use as a quick study guide: https://deskcrits.com/
• Karin’s Notes (FREE or small donation): Super helpful as a reference and an extra checklist of things to make sure to be familiar with: https://arevisuallearning.gumroad.com/l/DnOkN?layout=profile
• Walking the ARE Quick Study Guide: I found the PcM-PjM-CE one the most helpful: https://evolve4dllc.gumroad.com/l/PcM-PjM-CE?layout=profile
• Amber Book: I couldn’t afford the full subscription, but all of the videos on their YouTube channel are really helpful. Even so, I would definitely recommend listening in to the weekly 40 Minutes of Competence, it’s a really solid way to incorporate low effort studying into your day-to-day and the explanations and content are really great. There’s really no reason not to tune in, unless you have a time conflict: https://www.amberbook.com/40-minutes-of-competence/
• ARE Handbook: Probably a good idea to take a peek through, it has a lot of great information. Don’t do the same thing I did, gaslighting myself into wasting 3 weeks studying ANSI 117.1-2017 instead of the 2009 version.

Practice Questions/Exams

My experience may be different, but the main push of preparing for the exams were the 2 weeks before. The Ballast Practice Exams are super tough and have explanations which is great, but these 4 are the most helpful practice questions I have found. I really like that all of them (except for the NCARB practice exams) provide you a reference for where you might find the information related to each practice question so you aren’t plopping down 50 books and forcing yourself to read through everything.

NCARB Practice Exams: I recommend running through the PDF version before you start studying to figure out what you don’t know, then take it on the online test taking simulator a few days before test day as a check in to make sure you’re in good shape. If there’s a question that doesn’t make sense to you and the explanation isn’t helping, you can often find NCARB forum posts clarifying.

Elif’s Questions: I only used them for PPD and PDD, but these were EXTREMELY helpful, although a bit difficult

• https://arequestions.com/

WeARE: Huge bank of exam questions, moderate difficulty

• https://tryweare.com/are-5-0/

Black Spectacles Practice Quizzes (FREE): Good practice questions to run through, on the easier side

• PcM: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/pcm-practice-quiz/605
• PjM: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/pjm-practice-quiz/606
• CE: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/c-e-practice-quiz/610
• PA: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/p-a-practice-quiz/607
• PPD: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/ppd-practice-quiz/608
• PDD: https://community.blackspectacles.com/t/pdd-practice-quiz/609

Additional Resources:

• PcM, PjM, and CE: What documents/drawings are included in what: https://are5community.ncarb.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/360050657434-Elements-of-a-Project-Manual
• PPD
• https://arequestions.com/how-to-pass-ppd-exam/
• PDD
• https://are5community.ncarb.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/15368756967703-PDD-pass
• https://arequestions.com/how-to-pass-pdd/
• PDD/CE: If you’re not familiar with construction photos, here’s a good place to get comfortable with them (got this from Clarissa Hoskison/Trevor Klee here): https://hammerandhand.com/best-practices/manual/

I hope this helps, best of luck, and you got this!