I took and passed all six ARE 5.0 exams on the first attempt (I was tied for first in the country to do so). Below are 9 takeaways from my experience.
1. The content is similar to the ARE 4.0 content. I attended an “Exam Prep Provider Invitational” at NCARB’s national office in Washington DC in advance of the ARE 5.0 release and they let us know that they would still be using the 11,000 items from their bank of ARE 4.0 questions.
2. There are, of course no vignettes, and there is far less content in the area of structures. There is more content in what I call the “professional practice basket.”
3. NCARB attempted to shed what they derisively call “architecture trivia” questions and climb higher on Bloom’s Taxonomy. On that front they were moderately successful. I had a question in ARE 4.0 that asked the name of the equipment shown on the screen. I saw the same image in ARE 5.0, but the question this time asked what the equipment does. Bravo, NCARB.
4. Of course the way the questions are grouped in divisions is completely different. Take a look at the graphic I made and attached to this post. You can take two exams after studying the technical content, two exams after studying the professional practice content, and two after studying both the technical and professional practice baskets of content.
5. My advice is to study all the content and take all the exams at once. I took all six exams in six consecutive available Prometric slots: including a stint of four exams in three days. This is daunting to people, but getting past that will give you the highest likelihood of passing in the least amount of time studying. There was always content overlap between divisions, but now it is too extreme to ignore.
6. Failing an exam is not a big deal: just reschedule it for two months later and keep at it. And passing an exam but over-studying has a cost because you could have spent some of that over-studying time instead studying for the next exam, and still passed the first exam with less studying.
7. Stop telling people that you are studying for the exam, stop posting on social media that you are studying, and stop updating your colleagues on your licensure progress, and instead just tell them after you pass an exam. I believe the fear of looking foolish to people who know your exam schedule is the most common cause of over-studying for an exam.
8. Content first! Don’t fetishize testing strategies, or fixate on question types, or spend much too time on boosting your psyche, or memorize obscure facts, but rather spend your time striving to own the concepts. It gives you the highest probability of passing the exam, per hour of studying you devote (and it is more fun then memorizing, and it will make you a better architect than learning testing strategies). In fact, you shouldn’t spend much time looking at posts like this one. Spend the time learning the content instead.
9. Use the search feature in the case studies. Don’t spend too much time on any one question unless you’ve answered all the others.
Good luck.
-Michael Ermann, The Amber Book