5.0 Study Materials

5.0 Study Materials

Postby Sarcasmo » Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:57 am

A lot of candidates on this and other forums are now subscribing to the 'more is more approach' with 5.0 study materials. Many of the posted lists of study materials seem to be getting longer and longer. One person passes, so then anything they list get added to the next person's list, and so on. So, we now have the Big List.

I of course understand that 'everyone is different', etc., and it's also true that "whatever works" can certainly hold some water. But it's like anything else... 10 percent of testers will pass with pretty much no effort, and another 10 percent will suffer numerous fails no matter what they do -- so, I'm thinking more about that middle 80 percent.

I would suggest that a candidate instead use the "top references", found at the end of each ARE 5.0 Division in the 5.0 Handbook. I'm of average intelligence and a decent test taker -- and those 3 or four "top reference" books are all I used to pass each of the six divisions on the first try -- which is no different from the approaches and results of a pretty big group of other candidates I'm now acquainted with. I took the NCARB practice exam, but I never took a third-party practice exam or read the manuals, and didn't use third-party practice questions.

I always studied with my phone lying next to me -- if I did hit a concept I didn't understand, I would quickly google it. This was effective, made the text make sense, and typically only took maybe 15 minutes.

Again, any candidate is obviously free to do whatever they want -- and I'm not mad, bro -- I'm only suggesting that slogging though an additional bunch of third-party manuals and big online courses may not be the best path to passing for most candidates. I think the "top reference" path represents a more logical approach, since those references are given straight from the Most High -- ya know, NCARB... the folks that wrote the exam. And, I think this approach is certainly more efficient -- which, incidentally, might be the single greatest advantage of 5.0 over 4.0 -- I've read posts from lot of candidates reporting that they study about a month for each exam -- sometimes a bit longer for PPD / PDD. Which, means that a lot of candidates are passing 5.0 very quickly compared to 4.0. (That was my time frame as well, and if you have a job and life, the Big List doesn't fit into that time frame.)

So that's my two cents. Sometimes more is not more.
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Re:

Postby tatamin » Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:20 pm

-tatamis
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Re: 5.0 Study Materials

Postby Sarcasmo » Wed Feb 21, 2018 6:45 pm

^ Heh.....You missed my point 100 percent.
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Re: 5.0 Study Materials

Postby thd7t » Thu Feb 22, 2018 6:23 am

Sarcasmo wrote:^ Heh.....You missed my point 100 percent.

Wait! Are you saying that someone...has already compiled a TOP references list? AND that they've included it in a free study guide?! AND that the SAME people made the exam?! AND that we can research topics that we don't totally understand??

But, but, Sarcasmo, isn't there a magic bullet?
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Re:

Postby tatamin » Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:40 am

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Re: 5.0 Study Materials

Postby Sarcasmo » Thu Feb 22, 2018 3:36 pm

tatamin:

It sounds like you're saying that there are a lot of pages in the NCARB recommended books, so your strategy is to skip them.

5.0 attempts to reflect daily practice, and while some will argue how successfully it accomplishes that, most would agree that candidates having no experience with tools of the trade like building codes, the ADA, and the AGS, will of course need to study more. It sounds like you're saying that this describes you? Will you need to actually read every passage of each of these resources that you've added into your grand total of pages?

The same goes for the other books like Fundamentals and MEEB. Most candidates will assess each 5.0 recommended resource according to their own current strengths and weaknesses, and will tailor their efforts accordingly.

It's also very helpful to study the 5.0 handbook Section breakdowns for a given Division -- their are usually about a half-dozen sections -- and these also give a candidate a great overview of probable strong vs. weak areas. So, ultimately, NCARB is saying 'here is what's on the exam, and here is what to study'.

It's up to each candidate to organize, strategize, and conquer, and it will do little good to regard the NCARB study materials as a hopeless 5000-page blob.
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Re: 5.0 Study Materials

Postby cloudyy » Thu Feb 22, 2018 4:20 pm

I was probably the one that recommended reading BCI cover-to-cover (my bible, multiple times, just bought a betta fish and named him Ching <3). I agree with Sarcasmo, the best references are the ones listed by NCARB, but tatimin is right that adding up all the pages is a crazy number to think about. Because it's broad and easy to digest, I found BCI to be a great home base to keep me focused and moving along.

You won't know what is the ~*magical method*~ for you until you pass (LOL! Hindsight is 20/20). Nuthin' to it but to do it.
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Re: 5.0 Study Materials

Postby Sarcasmo » Fri Feb 23, 2018 8:23 am

Cloudy, good to see on another thread that you passed all exams. That is a great feeling -- congratulations.

As far as tatamin being right that adding up all the pages is a crazy number to think about -- I obviously disagree -- and that was the point of my previous post. As I described in that post, for any given exam division and NCARB recommended resource, there are a few more factors in play than simply adding up the pages (and then proceeding straight to panicking). Any given candidate comes to the exam table with professional education, sometimes an internship, and most often some level of work experience. For tatamin's grand total of pages to actually be relevant, a candidate would essentially have to have had none of that, and would then be starting from zero. Some candidates are further along than others when they take the exams, but tatamin's grand total addresses only that very small minority starting from absolute scratch.

Tatamin may in fact be in that minority, in which case it would only make sense that tatamin should have more studying to do. But for the reasons mentioned, throwing out figures like "5000 pages" is misleading. I am acquainted with a large group of folks who passed using the NCARB "top references" -- none of them (myself included) read 5000 pages.
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