My First Exam

Well I took my first exam just over a week ago and I am not very confident about it. I was hoping to walk out of there and know that I did well but there where fewer of the multiple choice questions that I was sure of than I hoped for. I am very confident that I did well on the design portion of the exam but no so with the multiple choice (this probably means that I did horrible on the design and well on the multiple choice); now I have to wait to see, and it may be a long wait. I was reading some posts on the ARE Forum and there are people who have taken exams at the beginning of July and they are still waiting on results.

I posted my thoughts immediately after the exam on the ARE Forum and some of the comments I made had to do with how surprised I was at the number of questions that dealt with historic preservation and adaptive reuse and how many questions had to do with the different design delivery methods. Other than that I do not think there was too many surprises but I did have time to review the entire exam again and am worried that I may have changed some answers from a correct answer to an incorrect answer (they say that on multiple choice, your initial thought is generally the correct one). I also had time to review the requirements for the design problem and am fairly sure that I did all that was required but not entirely sure that I interpreted it correctly, but I feel good about it still.

No time to dwell on it though, I am continuing as planned and moving directly to the next exam and have begun to study for it with our study group. We are now planning on taking the Construction Documents exam and I am thinking of taking it towards the beginning of November.

I will post again soon, good luck to those taking the exams and good luck to those who are studying.

In The Beginning...

This Blog is being set up to facilitate communications between any Architectural Intern who has been or is planning on taking the ARE 4.0 Exams for their licence.



I have started a study group consisting of about 12 people who are now preparing to take our first exam (mine is scheduled for September 11, 2008 (scary music)) and we have decided to begin with the Programming Planning and Practice. Starting mid September we will begin studying for the Building Systems exam next. We are planning on taking the exams every 4-6 weeks depending on the amount of studying we feel we need to prepare.



I am hoping that with this blog we can begin some more conversations about preparing and taking the exams. We can share tips and tricks that we are using to prepare as well as share our experiences with taking the exams (no posting of exam questions please). Hopefully, working together, we can all succeed and pass the exams and begin our lives as licenced architects.



I hope this will be of help to you and I really hope that you can help me.



Good Luck