CE Pass
I do apologize for the repetitive post but here are my notes for the CE exam.
Similar studying route as PcM and PjM:
PcM link below;
https://are5community.ncarb.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/360049461953-8-24-2020-PcM-Pass-
PjM link below;
https://are5community.ncarb.org/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500000040901-PjM-Pass
Study Schedule for CE:
I studied about 3 weeks for this exam and the reason why is was this short was because I noticed that a lot of the material overlapped with PjM. I would recommend maybe creating a 6/7-9 week schedule and study for both PjM/CE and I'm pretty confident you'll be able to pass both.
Weeks 1-2: Followed reading guide in the link below;
https://sganwdesign.com/2017/10/31/wiley-publishing/
Week 3: Read Contracts listed on the NCARB handbook & took Brightwood lesson quizzes as a full exam
If anyone has any questions I'm happy to help, Good luck everyone!
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Thanks for posting. I have my CE exam scheduled in about 3 weeks. I have CE, PjM & PcM remaining. I am curious if I should allow more time to study all material for CE/PjM more in depth and whether there might be a benefit to taking PjM before CE. I am just starting my studying for CE by the way, and have some real world experience with CA, RFI response, site visit activities but none in contracts, bidding, assigning liability. Any thoughts on the amount of study time or order of exams would be great, thanks.
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Nicholas Blondin
The order I took was PcM, PjM and CE. Similar to you I had experience with CA, but none with contracts and liabilities. What helped me build momentum with contracts and what comes with it is was taking Pcm, then PjM before CE. However, I do believe you can study for both PjM/CE (maybe 5-6 weeks) depending on how much time you have to study and take both the same week or a week apart. The contract that was referenced most during my PjM/CE exam was A201.
I found that PjM/CE have a lot more material in common apart from the contracts.
If I were to schedule these exams I would do 4-5 weeks of studying for PjM and 1-2 weeks for CE right after taking PjM. I supposed you could the other way too, it really depends how much time available you have to study. All I used was AHPP and brightwood.
Have you taken PA, PPD and PDD already?
Hope this helps!
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Thanks Miguel, very helpful indeed. I've decided to push back my CE exam a few weeks and will plan to take PjM shortly before or after per your suggestion. I feel more comfortable with that timeline. To answer your last question - Yes, I am done with PA, PPD & PDD. I was lucky to be able to finish the last of those right before the switch to the digital whiteboard application across all testing formats. Hopefully there aren't too many equations/calculations for CE/PjM. Thanks again and congrats on your own exam successes.
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Nicholas Blondin
I would have taken PjM/CE at the same time as well I just didn't pay attention to how similar they were. These two will definitely help set you up with contracts for PcM. What did you use to study for PA? I'm taking that next and a lot of posts are all over the place. Anything helps!
Thank you! Look forward to hearing about your experience with these next three exams.
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Miguel,
I mostly used Ballast ARE 5 RM and the Hyperfine study materials. I highly recommend Hyperfine as a supplemental 3rd party tool, especially for PA. It was also really helpful for PPD/PDD. The assignment style functions as homework and allows you to do more critical thinking instead of regurgitating facts or info. Each assignment also includes links to articles/websites/youtube vids that were used to create the material so it's almost like an extra library of resources.
PA is a lot of problem solving, which can actually be kind of fun, but also really time consuming. There is a fair amount of common sense questions that you probably don't even need to be an architect/designer to answer. It'll be really helpful to work on how to problem solve based on climate, site conditions, program requirements, etc versus only trying to memorize specific bits of information. Ballast was good but it's also very surface level and covers quite a bit of material that I never encountered across any of the PA/PPD/PDD exams. Be sure to at least be somewhat familiar with: historic buildings (ex: what kind of work is allowed based on the specific method of restoration), soil types & boring logs (how to read and apply to a design on a specific site), brownfields, some basic ADA requirements, water mediation on site and definitely know about building orientation, shape and placement on site based on climate or needs of user.
Like I said, I feel like Hyperfine was the biggest reason I was prepared for PA: https://hyperfinearchitecture.com/courses/
The curator, Ben, is really good about responding to questions you might have about topics or items in the material as well.
There are definitely too many options out there for study resources, but luckily the ones that have been recommended on the forums have all turned out to be useful. Hope this helps! Good luck!
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You can definitely pass this exam in less than a month (especially if you already passed PcM and PjM). There is considerable overlap between these three exams. I made a video of my recommended study resources and study schedule on my YouTube channel. Check it out here https://youtu.be/-qPZkheCijE
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Hello Miguel! I know it's been a while but that link no longer works, unfortunately; could you provide or point me in another direction to access the reading guide? https://sganwdesign.com/2017/10/31/wiley-publishing/
Thank you!
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