I passed, first try! 🥳

I just want to start off by thanking Zach for providing such a structured, thorough course. I bought the 6 month plan. By the end of the course not only did I have a good grasp on the material, I also realized how much I loved power engineering and why I went with it in the first place.

I graduated in 2021 with an EE degree and i’m coming up on my 4th year this month so it was the perfect time to get the exam done. My background is in protection and controls for substation design. Unfortunately I wasn’t very strict with my schedule for the first 2-3 months so I ended up having to cram quite a bit during the last two months, would NOT recommend. I studied for a total of 216 hours and by the last week I felt prepared for the test.

The AIT and TSG were incredibly helpful, IMO they were harder than the actual test (especially the AIT, boy is it hard). I started doing the practice tests a month before my exam date and those were the only two I did. If I could go back in time I would take Zach’s advice and start with them sooner than later. I didn’t do so hot on my first AIT try (a whopping 34%) and it really messed with my confidence given how close the exam date was.

The live classes is where it’s at. I watched all the lectures and did all the homework and the final exam. I didn’t get very far in the “on-demand” course, I think I only brushed up on insulation testing for that one and I felt like that was sufficient. I watched the live classes over and over until they clicked.

The actual exam was intense. I was surprised by the amount of conceptual questions (tho Zach did warn about that), and I did guess on quite a few of them, a good chunk was industry-specific. There was a lot of code questions that weren’t from the NEC but I flagged them and did them in the end. For the most part they were easy points and I felt pretty good about them. The calculations were good as well, all of them were stuff I’ve already seen before except for maybe two problems. I did three passes.

Also this is something I was curious about before the test, the NEC bookmarks provided on the exam were GREAT. You could see the title for each article, lots of branches (if you’re curious check out my first post to see what the branching looks like). Additionally the search tool for reference materials goes through the entire document, you can’t search individual pages.

I walked out of the exam feeling good initially, but then as time went on I started to realize some of my guesses were flat out wrong and I started losing confidence. Plus I left an hour early. Last night I was pretty sure I was going to fail and I could not sleep, but then at 5 AM I logged into NCEES and found out I passed! I’m so so happy. This is a dream come true.

Put in the hours and you’ll see progress, even if it feels like swimming against the current at first. It gets better as you do more problems and build the muscle for it. Just make sure to give yourself time and start early because your state of mind is really crucial for success.

Thanks again Zach! You are truly gifted. I will always hear your voice when I’m calculating three phase apparent power using line values “use magnitudes or the angle will be dead wrong” 😄

Best of luck to you all!