Planning to Study
You’ve just gotten approved to sit for the exam. You have five months to study. Realistically, you’re going to spend two of them procrastinating. How do you even start?
First thing you need to do before you start delving into the material is to organize your time. Setting up a study schedule is critical to managing your time efficiently and keeping yourself accountable. You may have been great at studying in school. But instead of cramming for an exam between your library job and going to a 90’s hip hop and R&B party, you now have a full-time job, a serious relationship (with your dog), dependents (your dog and your Netflix account), and other adult-type responsibilities.
You should plan out your study time from now until your exam, asking yourself the following questions:
Do I want to take a course?
How much time will I realistically study during the week after work?
How much time will I study on the weekend?
Do I need to block out days for special occasions, appointments, vacations, etc.?
When do I want to take my practice exam?
How many topics do I need to cover?
What topics do I need to spend more time on?
When am I going to take practice exams (under exam like conditions)?
At the very least, you should commit to a certain amount of time each day (for example: 2 hours during the work week, 4 hours on the weekend). To that you can break down your time into specific topics you need to cover and add specific tasks, breaks, and rewards. See below an example of what you’re schedule might look like.
PRO TIP: Google, “NCEES PE your discipline exam specification and design standards.” You’ll find the PDF that provides the topics and the references covered in the exam. Use the “approximate number of questions” section to see how statistically important a topic is and let it inform how much time you study it.
How I chose to schedule my time was to read each topic and then do the practice problems. Then after I reviewed all the material and was fairly prepared, I took the practice exam. I recommend taking your practice exam under exam conditions (i.e. the entire morning or afternoon session in one sitting at a desk with all your references under the exam time-constraints). I used the results of the practice exam to note areas I needed to study more, and
Because I only had one practice exam, the NCEES one, I needed to be strategic about when I used it. I wanted to take the exam after I was prepared enough where I thought I could “pass,” but with enough time in the schedule to study area that I did poorly on. If you have multiple exams, you may want to start with the “see where you’re at” exam in the beginning to gauge your strengths and weaknesses and end with a final practice exam to see where you’re finished.
Everyone says it, but it’s true. Make the last few days before the exam light review days ending in a relaxing no study day before the exam. The very best way to spend the day before the exam is to make sure everything you need is packed and to get a great night of sleep. This exam is open book, there is no need to cram.
Stay tuned for future posts about study tips!