So I did it. I finally sat down for the CSE. After months of procrastination and finding anything else to do in general, I got my act together and studied for this thing. To be honest, the true impetus for prepping to take the thing was CAB's changing of the exam come March 1. After calling PSI (because my city wasn't available to schedule online) I found out that the last date to sit to test before March 1, was going to be Tuesday, February 14. Well I wasn't too hot on having a day between the weekend and my test, so I opted to take it first thing Monday morning, February 13.
Everything seemed to be going well. I ended up getting a solid five weeks of studying in - much less than I had wanted, but still enough to prepare, IMO. Nailing all of the different California specific codes and regulations seemed to be the hardest part for me, and obviously I still have some work to do in those areas. I end up taking the exam (for the full 3.5 hours of time, mind you) and came out pretty exhausted. I end up receiving my report from the PSI employee and I missed the cutoff threshold by a whopping 1 point. I almost couldn't believe it at first, and frankly am still processing much of it - where could I have studied more, what could I have answered differently on the test, etc...
I'm planning to take it six months from now, with a strong attempt on not forgetting what I've learned over these past 5 weeks. Should be slightly different with CAB's new 2014 Test Plan, but I imagine it can't be that much harder. All in all, I just think I needed more repetition with the material to help cement the obvious stuff.
Study Material -
Doucette's WE - The whole gamut, pretty much just went through everything twice.
PassX Flash Card - Went through the whole stack once, probably should have done so a few more times. I honestly prefer the format of these to that in Doucette's WE.
Schiff-Hardin lectures for AIA Docs and related.
Test day -
There was much more reading than I had anticipated was going to be on the exam. Not that I'm bad at reading, it just requires a lot more time than I had experienced while taking all the practice exam material. There were time within the Project Scenarios where multiple questions in a row contained two or three sentences. This is quite a bit to process when you have to re-read for clarity and analyze every word.
Other than that, the test was OKAY, not overbearingly hard, just make sure to get through the questions and leave enough time for review.
See you all on here over the next six months.