ARGUS certification difficulty/time to complete
Curious how difficult the ARGUS certification is and how long it would take to complete for someone that has never really used the software, but has seen it in use.
Curious how difficult the ARGUS certification is and how long it would take to complete for someone that has never really used the software, but has seen it in use.
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You can do a training on Argus in 6-12 hours, but if you learned the software in a weekend and studied for a week, it's a breeze. Having an Argus certification is more cute than anything. As long as you know it, a firm isn't gonna ask you to show your cert to work for them.
That said, if you are just trying to break into CRE, I would say it would give you an advantage.
Great. I plan on doing 5-6 hours/day for about a week then take the test. And yeah, I'm definitely trying to use it as an advantage. I got the REFM levels 1-2 certifications on my resume and honestly think that is starting to get me more looks. The ARGUS cert would just tie everything together nicely.
The training is not at all difficult. Just make sure to read the questions carefully because there’s a lot of “gotcha” questions. It’s simple material for the most part, just don’t speed through it too fast.
Find a way to not pay sticker price for it.
Sounds good. And I don't think that's really possible without the "student discount" that seems to actually be impossible to get as a student unless your university does some collaboration with Altus Group. Also have a family member with a lot of connections there as she used to work there for years and I don't think she was even able to get me a discount if she wanted to. It's honestly such a rip off how much it costs but I see it as a worthwhile investment while on the job search.
Yep. The Enterprise test may be different, but when I got DCF certified, much of the test was "we have this brilliant program that calculates all of these things for you...now please do this calculation that you would never do by hand, by hand."
I did a weekend class and got certified a couple years ago. I don't use argus in my current job and I can confidently say I don't remember a single thing from the class.
I'll provide my insight as someone who not too long ago underwent the process:
I took the in-person two-day seminar in person. Was it helpful? Not particularly. The instructor read the book verbatim and followed the steps. Something you could have done by yourself. However, it was nice having him to answer questions on the spot whenever they did arise. If I were to do it again, I probably wouldn't have taken it in person, but for those that like to ask questions while following along, then I recommend it.
Work was very busy at the time so I couldn't do self-study cases/take the exam right after, so I had to wait a couple months before I had the time to settle down and start studying again.
I bought the three-month student access to ARGUS (It was like $120 or something), and still had the instruction manual so I went through and completed it cover-to-cover again, as well as doing the case studies in the back a couple of times before taking the exam.
Not sure about the consistency of the exam or if they change it up often, but I will say that the actual test was SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult than what the manual entailed. The first part (multiple choice) were very nitpicky with specific questions that you could not have cared less about when reading the actual manual. Fortunately, a lot of those questions were available on Quizlet, so it was a nice resource to have on the side while taking the exam.
The second part of the exam was the actual building of the case, and it was quite difficult as well. I wasn't able to successfully build the model because some of the assumptions that they wanted were not covered in the manual/case studies. If you didn't know how to input some of them, you were SOL. I had to guess on this part of the exam, which didn't fare too well.
I wasn't someone who had any kind of ARGUS familiarity before I dove head-first into the software program, so if possible (through work, school, etc.) I would highly recommend playing with/getting comfortable with it. The manual is fairly straight forward and easy to follow, and the cases in the manual weren't particularly difficult either. What it came down to for me was the fact that I had ZERO experience in ARGUS beforehand, and I probably spent (~2 hours a day every day after work, and then a full 8-10 hours on Saturday and Sunday) in the time leading up the exam. I studied for two weeks, so all in about 35-40 hours.
TL; DR - Manual/case studies - easy. Exam - difficult.
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Learning ARGUS Enterprise/getting certified was easier than I expected. Fortunately, I was able to complete the training/self-study and gain the certification during the summer, even with all the internship work. In terms of timing, I ended up doing 3-4 hours every weekend for about two months. Some advice- the exam is a lot more difficult than the case studies/training content so make sure you're comfortable with the software, especially on the second part of the exam (modeling case study). Good luck!
I just did the exam, and definitely agree the case study is trickier. Like cre_gog said make sure you know the software down pat so it gives you enough time to think about the unique requirements for the property. Honestly wasn't too bad if you practice, there are 15 questions for the case study and some of the answers are so different that even if you sort of messed up the case you should be able to get them and the 75 multiple choice was easy. If you get the e-learning modules, just do courses 1 - 4 multiple times (memorize the steps if you have to) and you should be fine.
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