For those of you educated outside of the US for your architectural education and for some of you where English is not your first language, I’m inclined to think Programming, Planning and Practice (PPP) and Site Planning and Design (SPD) could be tricky exams and should not be considered good first exam choices. My reasoning for this is that these exams are very broad in topic, have history questions and opinion questions.
Your education and culture may not have placed the same historical importance on the history questions covered in the exam. So it may take you longer to cover this topic. Finding a good history summary for this exam is no easy task and some may have to rely on the reference books NCARB specifies for these exams. Covering such a volume of information takes considerable time. (The Spiros Kostoff book can not be easily summarized.)
The exam questions need deciphering as to the opinion they are seeking. This implies an understanding of context, not grammar. I’m certain many understand English, but the context of the questions can be unclear when you understand English as your first language! Opinion questions require a judgment call that can be improved with experience in taking the exam and knowing what NCARB is seeking. Whereas your instinct from real practice experience may fail you. I spoke to a recent SPD test taker who couldn’t understand if a question posed was implying the positive or negative responses. The question asked what 3 of 6 choices are to be considered. I would assume the positive responses, but having had a similar uncertain reaction to questions on my PPP exam I could not offer much reassurance.
These exams are broad in topic and questions can be found on other exams. I experienced 3 to 5 questions on contractual responsibility in PPP. A topic fully covered in my Construction Documents and Services exam. Use topic overlap to your advantage by covering the exams where the questions are more right and wrong and there is less of an opinion or “best answer” response. Notice the reference books are the exact same for SPD and PPP. These two exams OVERLAP. Add that to the already mentioned overlap of other exam topics! (Another example is soil information in SPD and Building Design and Construction Systems. I haven’t taken either exam, but I can already see the overlap from my studies.) On PPP and SPD, the topic is so broad you could easily get 3 to 5 questions on something you did not cover or would have covered if you had taken another exam.
For these reasons I think those of you whose college education was outside of the states should strongly consider other exams besides PPP and SPD as introductory exams into the Architectural Registration Exam. Get your feet wet with exams that are more clear and focused than these two. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of my point of view. Good Luck!
PPI
Sketchbook Project