I'm sitting for the CES exam in 6 weeks and I'm starting to second-guess whether I gave myself enough runway. I've got about 4 years of environmental compliance experience, mostly in industrial permitting and stormwater management, so I'm not starting from zero. But the breadth of the exam content has me a bit nervous.
I've been putting in around 2 hours a day on weekdays and 4 hours on weekends, which comes out to roughly 18 hours a week. The hazardous waste management section is where I'm spending the most time because my day job doesn't touch RCRA all that much. The ecology and natural resources domain feels more comfortable, probably sitting around 70% accuracy on practice questions there.
The scoring is what confuses me — it's a scaled score and different prep sources give different pass estimates. Some say 70% correct is enough, others suggest you need closer to 75-80% depending on the form you get. Has anyone actually failed with 73%+ on practice tests going in? Trying to calibrate my confidence here.
The scaled scoring thing drove me crazy too. I was hitting 76-78% on practice consistently and ended up passing, so I'd say that range is a decent buffer. Just make sure your practice questions are from a source that's updated for the current exam version.
Don't underestimate the environmental law and policy questions. I thought my field experience would carry me but a lot of the questions are very specific about statutory authority and deadlines under CERCLA and RCRA. That section probably cost me 5 points I didn't expect to lose.
6 weeks with your background should be fine. I had 5 years in air quality and passed with about 4.5 weeks of prep, averaging maybe 15 hours a week. The hazardous waste section is legitimately the hardest part if you haven't lived it day-to-day.
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