Black SpectaclesReviews of blackspectacles.com

This is an excellent platform that provides additional study resources outside of the heavy text-based studying in other materials. The lectures provide a good base to the topics and the practice exams do an excellent job emulating the real thing. This is a great resource for studying, however additional material has been needed to round out and balance overall knowledge going into the exams.

I found the practice exams to be the most helpful. The videos are informative but too general at times.

Very good start for base of studying, still needs to be supplemented with other sources, especially for PA, PPD, PDD, & CE. Could be more detailed for the more complex exams. The practice tests are very useful.

Black Spectacles its okey

In general I was missing the visual content. I would have liked to receive and/or see more visual documents/content of the lectures. (Diagrams, sketches, etc.) Also a summary of some sort (list of most important items or similar) would be helpful at each section.

I used Black Spectacle and passed all the tests so it’s good but I also had some good experience that helped. Felt like there is definitely a good bit that can be improved and even some that was incorrect that I emailed about but never got a response. There’s a lot of redundant flash cards and some other info but it was overall a decent study program.

Black Spectacles was very clearly the resource I needed to pass my ARE’s. The practice tests are a mostly accurate representation of the real test, and it is great that there are 3 tests from each division. I didn’t make much use of the flash cards or games, but they were available had I wanted to. I had a few qualms with some formatting and content: The calculator was a little different, some of the resources were images, not searchable text, autocorrect made “sf” “Sq. Ft.” So they had “tranSq. Ft.er” when they meant “Transfer”. There were also a few content errors (the minimum tread depth is 11” not 7”—that’s max. riser height, folks!) I would absolutely recommend Black Spectacles to anyone who is taking the ARE’s—I did pass all 6 divisions in 41 days, so that result speaks to its success!

Excellent resource for candidates studying for Architectural Licensing Exams. Highly recommend!