Engineering Management Institute

FE Exam

Don’t Let Age Put You Off: Study

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This is a guest post by Dr. Rae Taylor

Before I sat down to start studying for the FE exam, I did a lot of prep research. I read everything I could about the exam itself: what was in it, how to book it, what equations would be given, and which ones should just be memorized. I also read everything I could in the way of personal experiences: how difficult people found the test, how much prep work they did, what resources they used. This was mostly Reddit reading. I like to call it r/r/r r/research/reading. It’s like normal research, but done exclusively on Reddit, and as such can’t be trusted.

One big thing I was looking for was the total amount of required study time. Like all people, I have other things going on in my life, so I wanted a rough idea of how many hours I would need to study, so that I could estimate an exam date. There is clearly a huge range in the amount of studying people do for the FE exam. Many factors come into play, such as how long you’ve been out of school, how well you did in school, if you moved out of industry and then back in, and whether you go it alone or take an exam prep course. Based on everything I read, I settled on an estimate of six months of studying, with 10 to 12 hours a week. It sounded like a lot, but that would allow for some weeks of decreased studying due to other commitments and some weeks of just not being bothered.

One thing I didn’t think about and didn’t read about was studying while being older. You might ask if that is the same thing as having been out of school for some time, which I already mentioned above. I would say that they are related, but different. Maybe two sides of the same coin. For me, how long you’ve been out of school just tells me how long it’s been since you’ve taken a course on something. Maybe you’ve been working as an engineer, but in a particular subfield, and haven’t seen this material for a few years. Being older is different.

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I’m Now Allowed to Sit For the Civil FE Exam

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This is a guest post by Dr. Rae Taylor

In 2011, I moved from England to the USA to take a postdoctoral research position at the University of California Berkeley. It was going to be a year full of world-class research, performed at a fantastic university, topped off with backpacking, hiking, biking, and trail running. Other than buying flights, I made pretty much no other preparations. A year later, still going strong in both research and hiking, I renewed my contract and my visa. Then again the next year, and again the one after that.

Fast forward many years, and I have left academia, married an American, live in the state of Washington, and am looking for an engineering job. Many (but not all) of the jobs that I see posted require an EIT. Armed with Google and an unlimited text messaging plan, I start trying to figure out what exactly an EIT is. Despite the strong agreement between my Google results and the boatload of texts from my U.S. engineering friends, I couldn’t believe that people willingly take a six-hour exam on everything they learned during their undergraduate engineering degree. At the time, I thought that seemed super-intense and not something I needed to do right then, so maybe I could put it aside and not think about it.

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The Ugly Truth behind the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam (FE Exam) and How You Can Finally Crush It in Less Time than You Think

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FE ExamThis is a guest post by Joel Erway, EIT, author of 30-Minute EIT: How to beat the FE exam without beating your head.

Here at Engineering Management Institute, we highly recommend our friend and sponsor, PPI, for your FE exam review. As an exclusive benefit to our supporters, PPI has extended a 20% discount on their exam review materials. All you need to do is enter promo code PASS8 at checkout at ppi2pass.com .

Over the past three years, I’ve spoken with many engineers who are looking to advance their careers by becoming a licensed Professional Engineer (PE). Some are students fresh out of college and others are engineers who have been out of school for more than 10 years. But they both face a common problem.

They are stuck.

Preparing for the FE Exam and
Don't Know Where to Start?

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The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is a beast. Six hours long, 110 questions, and up to 18 separate subjects to study for, depending on your discipline. It scares most people just thinking about studying for it, and some quit before they even start.

 “I Have Other Obligations”

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