Passed ARE in 11 Weeks with Amber Book (and) What I wish I knew ahead of time.
Long story short, I passed in 11 weeks with 2 retakes. For those wondering if you only need Amber Book to study- the answer is yes. I was worried about the price but considering how much my education cost in total it is a drop in the bucket. Dollar for dollar I learned way more than I did in school and it was mostly enjoyable. My favorite thing is that it doesn't feel corporate or impersonal. I felt like I was taking a class, not just studying material. Michael has a very dry sense of humor that I grew to appreciate over the course of my studying.
What I wish I knew beforehand:
I heard an anecdote about Tiger Woods being horrible in sand traps. Instead of practicing how to hit out of the sand, he practiced really hard to never hit the ball into the sand in the first place.
Amber Book takes this approach, you'll never be able to study 100% of the ARE but you can study 80% of it really well, which is more than enough to pass if you understand the concepts. Most often questions that seem really confusing or out of left field are really just a simple concept you need to understand in order to get the correct answer. If it seems confusing just ask yourself 'what are they trying to see if I understand?' and seemingly complex questions are often very (sometimes deceptively) simple. The question writers love to throw Mcguffins at you to psyche you out. Calm down and don't fall for it. Visualizing the questions as I was reading them helped me a lot, even in contracts. Yes, I visualized lawyers, contractors, owners and architects arguing over contracts and it helped.
About the Amber Book specifically, I figured the flash cards and practice tests would be quick. WRONG. Some of the sets of flash cards took me several days, for instance there will be 150 flash cards for a single test and some of the individual flash cards have an hour long video linked. It's not mandatory to watch them, but I did tend to keep the videos in my brain by seeing what a French Drain looks like being dug, for instance. Amber book recommends 2 months, which is reasonable if you study 20+ hours a week. I think 3 months is much more reasonable, I took some trips out of town and took weekends off, all for a whopping $220 extra. I think I paid 5 months total. For each fail AB saves you, that's a month AB paid for itself.
For the practice tests, every answer has a long and informative explanation. It takes a few hours per test, then even longer to read all the answers. They are great to review before an exam (along with flashcards), I just got a 0% on them to review the answers. They should have a link to the answers so you can review them without taking the test again. The practice tests were extremely helpful... but keep in mind the wording on all of the tests is taken right out of Amber Book so there are very few 'curveballs'. I got above 70% on every test I ended up passing, and failed PDD my first try after an 82% on the Amber Book practice test. What I mentioned about learning HOW to take the ARE and narrowing down the simple concepts comes into play here. You literally need to practice the ARE to take the ARE. I credit about 10% of my passing to work experience, 10% to learning how to take the ARE, and 80% studying Amber Book. I also listened to Schiff Hardin lectures (linked in AB) passively, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to listen to them at 1.5x speed while reading the contracts. Reading the contracts without them did absolutely nothing for me, I don't comprehend or digest contract wording AT ALL. I did look over Building Construction Illustrated a bit, not a bad thing to do. I don't think it resulted in any more correct answers.
Still reading?
A bit about the tests: I'd take them in order from the AB except I would not do PA first. There's a lot of diagrams and clicking on stuff which I explained is part of the learning curve of the ARE. CE can also go after PjM and PcM, or at the end. Contracts should be fresh in your mind when you take it, but same with details.
Here's the order I took them:
CE: Failed first try, didn't really understand what the test was about and I read it was easiest. Got thrown off and stressed out by a bunch of the 'curveballs' I described above. 2nd try passed, it was medium-hard for me.
PjM: Passed, not terrible, just know your contracts well.
PcM: Same as PjM
PA: An absolute emotional roller coaster. I felt like every single question I got 'sort of' wrong. The only test I ran out of time, I was frantically clicking random answers at the end, even filled in the blanks with some random numbers. I clicked out of absolutely defeated and PASSED! I think I ended the test at 1am and couldn't fall asleep in 4. Know how to orient buildings and read topo lines easily.
PPD: Some people think it's the hardest. Not sure if I got a lucky set of questions but it was easy...really easy. I think AB does a great job with systems, and the contracts questions would have been the easy, low hanging fruit of PjM and PcM. I had an hour left on the clock by the time I finished.
PDD: Failed first try. I didn't 'get it' first time through. Details intimidate me, and I got a bit flustered. A lot of the questions are more logic puzzles than anything. Once you understand that, makes it easier. 2nd try was difficult but not crazy.
As far as timing, I normally had half the time left by the time I started the case studies. I hated the case studies, a lot of the time I was confused about what they were actually asking. I gave myself tons of time on them not to get stressed by the clock. After I was done I went back to my flagged questions. I changed a decent number, a lot of the time because I misread the question. Visualizing the question as I was reading it really helped me focus, otherwise I was reading some questions 5+ times because I was nervous.
That's it. Yeah, it feels good writing this 'memoir' if you will. I really can't thank Michael and the AB team enough, I'm so glad it exists. I was totally lost on the ARE before I saw it recommended here. I doubted myself a lot, especially after my first PDD fail (after PPD was so easy for me I thought I had the ARE 'figured out'). It's normal, just keep in mind nothing on the test is THAT hard. It's all simple concepts, just a lot of them. I went to a school with abysmal ARE scores. Most of you did better than me in school. Now I get to take the CSE.
Oh and my one gripe with Amber Book: The group discount is so stupid. If you sign up on young architect you can get a code within a day, but why make us jump through that hoop? I never met anyone in my 'group discount' nor did I even see their names.
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Hey Austin - Congrats! I am in a similar boat. PDD is my last test and I just failed my first attempt. After you failed your first PDD try, was there anything specific you changed about your studying that made you feel more prepared the second go around? New material that you supplemented with AB or perhaps new topics that you decided to dive deeper in?
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Hey Madison, I really don't think I did anything that different 2nd try. I did go over the wood, steel, masonry, and concrete sections again on 1.5x speed which helped jog my memory on a few things. The roofing, enclosure, and to a lesser extent systems are important to know as well. I skipped site, and if you passed the other tests you'll probably know enough to answer the contracts corrections correctly.
I did take a longer look at the details linked in the AB flash cards, and looked at some details in Building Construction Illustrated (if you don't have the book, not worth it for that IMO, just google curtain wall and flashing details). I think I had a much better grasp of details 2nd time around. I also did the PDD practice test again, and read the answers for the PPD test. They added some new answers in the past 2 months.
But honestly I credit my passing mostly on learning HOW to take the ARE better, meaning taking a look at the questions and getting rid of the extraneous information, figuring out what the question is REALLY asking, which fortunately often makes the question much easier. About half way through I realized if I didn't pass I wouldn't know how to study differently. The only other advice I could give is to study other terms for things. AB uses the same terms a lot, don't get thrown off if a similar term is used that you're not familiar with. I don't really know how to study for that, but most of them are common sense. Trust your common sense, stay calm and you'll do fine. -
Congrats Austin! thanks for sharing your tips and experience.
How much time did you give between exams? 1 day? couple days? 2 weeks?
I've finished pcm and pjm. i'm planning to take CE -> PA -> PPD -> PDD and i'm not sure when to schedule for CE. should I wait until I go through all the contents of Amber book then, take all remaining four, maybe a week apart for each exam?
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Doh - I can't speak to AmberBook, but I studied PjM+CE together. Took CE yesterday and PjM today. In hindsight, I would have studied/taken PcM+PjM+CE together, considering the considerable amount of overlap and the foundation of knowledge coming from AHPP and contracts.
The PjM exam already covers bidding & CA phases - and the CE exam is simply a deeper dive into those phases. It adds in the basics regarding; site analysis & soils; hazardous materials & remediation; excavation & foundations; testing & analyses; project closeout; CSI divisions & specifications; typical exterior wall sections & waterproofing. There's less focus on project delivery methods & pricing, but more of a focus on contracts/responsibilities & CA (G-series) documents.
Depending on how fresh PjM still is to you, I'd get right back into it and get CE out of the way before moving on to PA+PPD+PDD.
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Doh, I'd study everything first. There's always a few crossover questions on each exam and it's better to be familiar with all the content. Normally the crossover questions are easier so you don't need a really detailed grasp on the content.
If you can schedule the tests 2 days in a row with a few days in between sets I'd do that.
I took 3 in a row my first time and I was pretty burnt out by test 3. Just like training to be in shape, interval training seems to be the most effective and least daunting for people instead of a sprint or marathon.
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Hi Austin! Thank you so much for this post, it is very insightful and you went into much more detail than a lot of posts on here.
I saw that you recommended going through the whole Amberbook before taking any of the exams, but I am curious how quickly you went through the Amberbook? I am about 2 weeks in now and it says I am 27% through it so I am on track to go through it in about 7-8 weeks total.
Did you take notes/draw diagrams as you went through? If so, how often did you go back and study your notes each week throughout the course? Or would you recommend just powering through Amberbook and using the flashcards/practice exams to study?Thanks again!!
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Hi Zachary! I used AmberBook for my last 2 exams, PPD and PDD, and I only paid for 2 months subscription but, now, I wish I had planned it better to do it for 3 months instead. I failed PPD two weeks ago (failed score was 508, need 550 to pass) and passed PDD yesterday (first try). I went through 80% of the total course (I didn’t do the “practice” course, and missed the flash cards and practice exams) but this was because I took a lot of notes on all the courses I did, as Professor Ermann suggests, and watched some of the videos more than once. So, if you are the type of person that relies on note taking to aid in information retention, I would highly suggest that and to extend your AmberBook to 3 months. I’m planning on getting back on it a month before retaking PPD. Good luck with your studies!!
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