I'm planning to sit for the PCC in early September and wanted to see if my timeline is reasonable based on others' experience. I have about 6 years in project controls (scheduling and cost) but haven't done formal study since finishing my BS. Right now I'm blocking out 1 hour on weekdays and 2-3 hours each weekend day.
The AACEI competency areas I'm least confident in are risk management and earned value methodology - I do EV daily but learned it on the job rather than from the formal ANSI 748 perspective. I've been working through the Skills and Knowledge of Cost Engineering publication, which is dense but seems to be the primary source the exam draws from.
For anyone who's taken it recently: how much of the exam is calculation-heavy versus conceptual? My background is stronger on the conceptual side but I don't want to under-prepare on the math. I saw posts saying roughly 30-35% involves calculations but those were a few years old.
12 weeks is workable with your experience level. I passed on my first attempt after about 10 weeks but I have a pure scheduling background. The calculation percentage sounds about right from what I saw - EV metrics, indices, forecasting formulas. Nothing exotic but you need to be fast.
Risk quantification - Monte Carlo outputs and interpreting confidence levels - came up more than I expected. If that's a weak area I'd spend dedicated time there, maybe 8-10 hours beyond your normal rotation through the domains.
The ANSI 748 framing is worth the time. I failed my first attempt at 71% partly because I was applying EV concepts correctly but wasn't matching the terminology the exam expected. Second attempt I scored 82% after drilling on that alignment specifically.
The calculation portions aren't timed separately so don't panic if they take longer. I flagged the heavier math questions and came back after clearing the conceptual ones. Finished with about 22 minutes to spare overall.
Honestly I almost talked myself out of even sitting for it. Six years in the field and I figured the exam would just confirm what I already knew, but the first practice set I took humbled me fast. The terminology and the formal formulas are a different animal than day to day project controls work, and I kept second guessing whether 12 weeks was enough on a part time schedule. Your timeline is fine by the way. I had roughly the same hours and it worked, I just wish I'd started doing real questions sooner instead of only reading.
What pulled me out of the slump was grinding through actual problems until the patterns clicked, especially the scheduling and earned value stuff since that's where I bled the most points early on. I leaned on this free pcc scheduling time management set a ton in the back half. There were a couple weeks where I genuinely thought about pushing my date, didn't, and ended up passing on the first try. Don't read your low practice scores as a verdict. They're just telling you where to spend the next hour.