Hi @hdivito, yes! The only subscription we used was Black Spectacles. However, we did use a bunch of other textbooks that we had to pay for. I’ll @ you on my response to another question where we laid out the essentials, (in our opinion)
please ad me also for that, thanks
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Hi @tamar_K. This is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things about the ARE, just how many of them there are and how long they take! I think a study/exam buddy really helps with this. You can keep each other accountable, study together, and motivate each other when someone feels down. I think the online forums are a great place to find people to go through this with as well. One strategy I used personally - I would tell everyone when I was taking an exam (family, coworkers, etc) to keep myself motivated to study haha. Having accountability to friends and family helped me stay focused to get them done!
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any tips on tackle the case studies? they seems very hard and takes long time to finish
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add me also, please
Yes! We love Black Spectacles and used it for all of our exams. Our favorite thing about Black Spectacles is the practice exams. These are the closest thing you will get to the real thing, hands down. They’re a great barometer for how you’re doing with the material – generally, we were getting around 70% on the BS exams before taking our tests, if that is helpful! I also listened to the Black Spectacles videos while doing mindless CAD drafting at work… shh don’t tell my boss haha.
In our humble opinion, Desk Crits and BS are a great complementary fit because you can use Desk Crits to give you an outline of what to study and where to find it, along with some foundational notes, then you can use Black Spectacles to reliably test your progress! The videos also help review / deliver the information in a different way which some might find helpful.
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Hi @aj1 awesome haha! We hope you like it and we hope it helps!!
We found a fair amount of variation in material between our exams, to be honest. Sometimes one of us had a really hard exam, while the other person thought it wasn’t too bad! That’s why we always say if you failed or felt like an exam was super hard, try to get right back to studying as soon as you can and book your re-take for as soon as possible to build off of the studying you’ve already done!
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Due to the pause on prometric testing centers, I scheduled my first 3 exams 10 days apart starting at the end of July (pcm, pjm and ce). I have already taken pcm once before and thought I would study one subject each month then review right before the exams. Those were the earliest dates available and I didn’t want to drag it out any longer-- do you think that’s doable vs taking one a month?
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Do we have to memorize the AIA contracts?
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Hi @luisr! Hi! Yes we agree that getting 70% on Black Spectacles is a good barometer of preparedness! And it’s true, trying to get into NCARB’s head to understand what they’re asking and why is really important for making it through these exams. I think there are a few ways to tackle this – one would be to try and do as many practice questions as you can. Start with the Ballast Practice Questions, and the Ballast Practice Tests, and be sure to read all of their answer descriptions!! Their questions are hard, and at times obscure, but re-reading questions alongside the answer descriptions help you really understand what the question is getting at.
Another general tip that really helped us during the exams is to read every question twice! The first time, read to try and understand what topic they are testing you on - are they making sure you understand risks in contracts? Do they want to make sure you know ADA? Then, read it a second time and use the highlight tools in the testing interface to pull out key information. If it’s a multiple choice question, use the strikethrough tool to rule out answers you know are wrong. Sometimes it is easier to get to the right answer by eliminating all of the wrong ones!
And – also important – if you have NO CLUE what you are looking at, flag it and move on. Sometimes a relevant question pops up later in the test that will help. If you get even luckier, the case study will plant the answer for you! And sometimes, you’ll just have to scratch a few questions off as hopeless. Stay level-headed and move on. Hopefully this helps!
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Thank you for the reply, very helpful!
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Thanks so much for your help
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Hi @tatiana! I think that’s totally doable. I would cast your study net wide for PcM first, as in really read AHPP and take good notes, and study the contracts well, as there is so much overlap between PcM and PjM. CE will have overlap for the construction contracts, so generally knowing your contracts going into all three will help! I would also study some details for CE, and read the chapters in AHPP about pre-construction and construction administration. I think, given the current situation, your strategy of studying for them all now, then reviewing right before each test is a good one! 10 days of review for each test should be plenty, especially if you’re studying full time. It’s important to get into the mindset of each exam before you take it, and be sure to refresh with some black spectacles practice exams before you head into each exam.
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May I ask you which state and location are you in or did you scheduled?
Hi Tess & Sam,
Is the Desk Crits Guide to the ARE been approved by NCARB?
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Hi @iliana95! I don’t think you should set out to memorize them, but you should be very familiar with them for PcM/PjM/CE. Try to pull out key concepts from each contract so that you can understand why they’re written the way they are! I would try to memorize the different timelines in the contracts, just because that can be hard to remember any other way. There are certain time limits that one party has to respond to another (ie that an owner can terminate the contract with 7 days notice, etc) that NCARB likes to test you on, so I would take special note of things like that!
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Thank you very much!
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Hi @ellakui! Running out of time but we’ll post something quick! They can take a while to finish. I think the first thing to do is to quickly open up each resource so you understand what you’ve got, you do NOT need to read all the resources! Then go through question by question and turn to the resources that are relevant. Word searching the PDFs is huge for the case studies, sometimes by searching for a key word in a question you will find the answer immediately! Something that took me a few exams to realize as well is that you can see an outline of each PDF resource, by clicking the little bookmark icon. This is especially helpful for navigating the code sections, so you don’t waste time scrolling!! I hope that helps!
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