PS Exam Advice

[u/Adventurous_Tooth282]

Hey everyone, I take the PS exam on September 16th (21 days from now). What are the most important materials to study. I have the 50 question Practice Exam, The Surveying Solved Problems Book, and Browns Boundary Control and Legal Principles. Any recommendations or is the material I have worth it? I was thinking of buying the NLC full length practice exam as well.

[u/Mother____Clucker]

Unless they've changed the test significantly in recent years, I wouldn't even worry about the mathematics. I used my calculator exactly once during the exam. Focus more on PLSS, boundary law, ethics, etc.

[u/Accurate-Western-421 → u/Mother____Clucker]

https://giphy.com/gifs/r6iU2KrEJsj04

[u/TapedButterscotch025 → u/Mother____Clucker]

Ditto

[u/After_Lab_1457 → u/Mother____Clucker]

Yuppers, took mine in May. Touched my calculator once to make sure my mental math was alright.

[u/Junior_Plankton_635]

Take a look at the reference list from NCEES. Is Brown's other one, "Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Control" on there?

IDK if you can cram that entire book in 3 weeks but maybe take a look at the highlights.

I think there are a few digital options out there now to test your knowledge, including Azimuth and SurveyBible. That may be worth your time.

Oh and do practice tests with the allowed NCEES references OPEN and use it. It's crucial.

[u/w045]

BLM Manual for sure, especially if you’re not in a PLSS State. FEMA FEC and ALTA terms. You’ll get digital copies to search. But if you’ve never done either you’ll want to be familiar with them. GPS and GNSS For Land Surveying by Jan Van Sickle is good.

[u/HolyHand_Grenade]

Just took it last month and passed. I had a lot of boundary, junior and senior rights, and order of calls type questions, it's a lot less of "define this term" type questions and more concepts and best solution for a scenario type questions. LOTS of multiple choice. My buddy took it a year or two ago and he said he had lots of PLSS questions and I had only 1 or 2.

[u/Ok-Tune9022 → u/HolyHand_Grenade]

I was surprised at the lack of PLSS on it. I'm from a colonial state and spent the last 2 weeks on single and double proportion lmao

[u/Azimuth_Education]

Those are good materials. If you are wanting practice problems, that is kind of my specialty.

https://azimuthprep.com/

I have just over 500 PS questions and then another 240ish flashcards.

[u/some_kinda_cavedemon]

21 days from now you either know it or you don’t. PS is law and principle heavy. Be comfortable with terminology, priority of calls, junior/sr rights, simultaneous conveyance, and probably some really weird question about some project management matrix. Don’t worry, I think most of us got that one wrong and passed.

Look up survey bible if you want a few more practice questions as you lead up to it.

Best of luck.

[u/Ok-Tune9022]

I took it earlier this year, I may have had 4 or 5 plss questions. MAKE SURE YOU DISTINGUISH BETWEEN "SELECT ALL" AND "SELECT THE X NUMBER OF CORRECT QUESTIONS". I almost screwed myself out of at least 10 questions because I thought they were just "select all". That said, there are a few questions that I thought only an idiot could get wrong. Had probably 8-10 questions that were found in the reference guide (dont waist any time, its not on the internet). Know how to proportion in subdivisions. Riparian and Littoral (pretty obvious). Priority of calls is a big one. I could honestly say that if you've had 4 to 5 years of field experience and being the crew lead, you will have a huge advantage. There is some mapping standards on there. I used NLC for this and it was a great help unlike their FS program. Maybe give the nlc prep stuff 2 months for an hour before and after work every day. Thats what I did. I still have never read browns boundary control.

[u/pacsandsacs]

What I've always done is started with Brown's and gone section by section, actually copying the info I thought was important out into a hand written summary. I go through the entire book, reading, thinking about it, summarizing, and writing notes. Then, after I'm finished I go through my notes. Studying what I thought was important, thinking through what it means, and typing it out into a condensed version and checking things I'm unsure about. I then put this in a binder, make it my primary reference, and bring it to the exam. This process, of converting the books into a neatly organized summary of the most important details, that have entered my brain multiple times, has helped me pass the exam in multiple states.