by Sarcasmo » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:41 am
As far as the Amber Book working or not goes, take a look at the thread I wrote called 5.0 Study Materials. (It's not a magical post, but I don't want to write all that again, thus the reference.)
For some candidates, it just does not matter what they study -- they could study the phone book and pass the ARE 5.0 with flying colors, and you may be in that category. Are you? For the majority, there are approaches that typically work out well, and those that typically do not work out so well. I mention that to somewhat discount the random posts that "All I used was the "X" third-party manual, and I passed!" I'm not doubting them -- some candidates have done just that. In a sense, it's their version of studying the phone book. To be clear -- I absolutely love the stories of candidates killing the ARE 4 or 5 in record time -- that is so awesome -- but most won't quite be able to pull that off.
The Amber book, Brightwood, Ballast, etc. -- all have value, but you do not want to use them as a primary study source for 5.0
A minor point: it always did made me pause a bit, too, to look at a given third-party manual and realize that the manual was published prior to the launch of 5.0.....as I've said elsewhere, yes, the profession and it's associated technical information remain the same, architecture was not suddenly reinvented -- and that's one of the pro-third party arguments that is constantly made, but that's not the issue at hand. The real issue is that you're looking at someone else's abbreviated version of their opinion of what everyone should study. It's not that these third-party resources don't contain a lot of great information -- of course they do -- but as I wrote in my other post, candidates come to the table with a very wide bandwidth of knowledge and experience. And, tests like PPD and PDD are very broad. So, it's quite a gamble to hang your hat on any given third-party resource -- what are the chances that it fits your specific needs? Beyond that, the chances that it contains all of the information in the resources suggested by NCARB itself is zero.
NCARB tells you what to study for the NCARB exam -- you won't need to read every bit of it, because you'll be stronger in some areas. But you can also look at the list and division/section outline and immediately realize your specific areas of weakness, and then dive into those parts of the ARE 5.0 top references.
So, if anything, use the third-party materials as secondary review. For example -- some of the 5.0 exams are contract heavy -- PjM, CE -- so once you're through studying what you need from the "top references" in the ARE 5.0 Handbook, you may certainly benefit from going over the associated chapters in, say, Ballast. The flip side may be someone to saying, "Hey, I'm using the (fill-in-the-blank) study resource for PPD / PDD..." --- which, is typically not going to work out well for most candidates on exams like PPD/PDD.
That's my opinion, and good luck with your exams!