FE Crash Course Recommendations

Greetings fellow engineers. I am an Irish civil/structural engineer who has failed the FE twice. Last time i thought i had it but was bitterly disappointed.

I fucking hate studying for this exam and am reluctantly coming around to the fact that I might need a crash course. There are so many available and i dont want to pay $1000+ for a course thats a piece of crap. Has anyone any recommendations on the different courses and their worth?

A fe of the names I've come across:

- engineering, education and training

-school of pe

-excel test prep

-ppi

- pe institute

- brightwood engineering education

- minnesota siciety of professional engineers

- capstone

- engineer in training

Also can anyone suggest study groups, other forums, youtube channels or any other resourse i can utilise.

I live in San Francisco and currently work 7-5.30pm monday-friday. 

Thanks and any help will be much appreciated.

What have you done previously to prepare?

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Studied my ass off for a year. I fucking hate this exam. Covering everything except environmental and geotechnical. I did better in these than my supposed good subjects. 1st time i was extremely short on time and didnt get a chance to go back on the ones i skipped. The second time was better but i think i didnt see the last 2-3 questions.

Deep breaths my friend, deep breaths. If you have the money, I would recommend taking a class. A class would help you focus your efforts on the most likely topics that you will see on the test. I took school of pe for the fe exam and eet for the pe. Either could work for you. You should call them both and explain your situation and see which one is the best fit for you. I did this with eet for the pe. They were very good.

Moleboy said:

Studied my ass off for a year. I fucking hate this exam. Covering everything except environmental and geotechnical. I did better in these than my supposed good subjects. 1st time i was extremely short on time and didnt get a chance to go back on the ones i skipped. The second time was better but i think i didnt see the last 2-3 questions.

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Self study? Reading? Practice problems? Practice exams? What did you do to study is what I'm asking. What helped me the most was the testing process. Working on speed by going through the quick easy questions first then going back through for a second third and fourth tier of difficulty. This was my problem with the FE and the PE alike. I haven't taken a review course. I just do practice problems and exams and get super familiar with my resources. Others can help with suggestions on courses. But don't get frustrated. Not passing on the first and second try is fairly common. Dont let it defeat you. You can do it!

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matt267 PE said:

Deep breaths my friend, deep breaths. If you have the money, I would recommend taking a class. A class would help you focus your efforts on the most likely topics that you will see on the test. I took school of pe for the fe exam and eet for the pe. Either could work for you. You should call them both and explain your situation and see which one is the best fit for you. I did this with eet for the pe. They were very good.

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Thanks a million for the words of encouragement Matt. I was going to book a class a month ago then i found some very negetive comments which put me off. I wanted to do it without the class (pride and stuborness), but if i need it to push me over the line then so be it. The money spent can be saved in a month and if it saves me months of study it doubly pays off.

Between the School of PE and EET, whos methods and course did you favour?

Thanks again for the help.

thejulie_PE said:

Self study? Reading? Practice problems? Practice exams? What did you do to study is what I'm asking.

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All except practice exams. I worked part time for a year to study and still failed. I keep going until I get this (stubornness and pride driving me on). I exclusively worked from the ppi material. I covered the material but spread myself too thin on the final revision underestimating the time to cover material. 

I was advised by someone to take the other disciplines paper instead as they said the civil paper is the hardest and the other disciplines is less in depth. 

What does anyone think of that advice?

Gotcha. Maybe a course would be helpful. Sometimes pointing out key things to look out for helps so much. Lectures like that helped me on many exams in the past

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thejulie_PE said:

Gotcha. Maybe a course would be helpful. Sometimes pointing out key things to look out for helps so much. Lectures like that helped me on many exams in the past

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Thanks for your ongoing advice Julie. Much appreciated. 

Im currently viewing some fe review course lectures on youtube. They seem pretty good. They're giving tips on what comes up and what doesn't. It also simplifies concepts. 

Would anyone have advice on a youtube channel or subscribers videos to watch?

Moleboy said:

2 hours ago, thejulie_PE said: Gotcha. Maybe a course would be helpful. Sometimes pointing out key things to look out for helps so much. Lectures like that helped me on many exams in the past Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

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Thanks for your ongoing advice Julie. Much appreciated. 

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You're welcome! Keep on keepin on! You've got this!

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Well Moleboy, what's the craic.

Have you tried EIT fast track book? it's an e-book with a ton of questions + their solutions, that was my number 1 resource for studying for the FE and I passed it first time with self-study. It was pretty cheap when I bought it back in 2014.

I used PPI Civil FE quiz bank when I was within 30 days of the exam (bit harder than the test and not as useful to me as the EIT fast track, but it was still OK).

Also found the "FE review by Isaac Wait" on youtube to be pretty good as well.

Biggest tips:

Just do questions over and over again, and mix it up with listening to a few youtube videos on topics you are getting stuck on.

Use an electronic FE_Reference handbook to get used to it, instead of just using a printed copy.

Moleboy said:

Between the School of PE and EET, whos methods and course did you favour

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@Moleboy,

I just saw your response/questions. Sorry for the delay in my response.

I took the FE while it was still a paper exam. So I can't comment on how they teach for the computer based exam. If you call them up, they should be able to answer questions for you though.

Moleboy said:

I was advised by someone to take the other disciplines paper instead as they said the civil paper is the hardest and the other disciplines is less in depth. 

What does anyone think of that advice?

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They are no longer offering paper exams. There also isn't an "easier" test. I would take the FE that most closely resemble what you do day to day. Check out the NCEES FE exam specs to see what best fits for you: http://ncees.org/engineering/fe/

The exam specs are also helpful when trying to decide what topics to study.

Moleboy said:

Im currently viewing some fe review course lectures on youtube. They seem pretty good. They're giving tips on what comes up and what doesn't. It also simplifies concepts. 

Would anyone have advice on a youtube channel or subscribers videos to watch?

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Watch videos is good, but working practice problems is better. I would recommend taking a couple full length practice exams too.

Check out: http://www.engineerintrainingexam.com/

There used to be some free material on that site. It might still be there.

How long ago did you graduate?  There is a free Coursera FE Class that I tried but felt its not formatted for me who graduated 20 yrs ago.

Check it out maybe you'll find it helpful.  For myself, I registered for School of PE, FE Review class for January and Feb 2017.

Don't be frustrated, I passed mine in 6th time so you are not alone, before that I hated to study those stuff too over and over.  

I took school of PE and go a little deeper for each subject to understand more, and search online to find practice as much as I can. Good luck !!

I myself had to take the FE exam multiple times before passing so I know the frustration you are going through.  For me, I didn't use any formal review classes, I went based off of the Lindeburg Review Manual and practice problems I found online and from friends.  Instead of being frustrated that you failed twice, use it towards your advantage to help you prep for your next exam. Based on your past 2 attempts, you should have a good idea in terms of pacing yourself to have enough time,you should also have a general idea of which areas gave you trouble and which one you were able to easily answer.  Try to focus more time on those trouble areas first and then refresh yourself on the topics you have a good understanding of.  If you haven't already done so, I would recommend purchasing the reference manual they give you during the exam. Familiarize yourself with this manual and how it is organized. You can't bring your own copy to the exam, but you can save a lot of time if you know where to look in the manual for material so you spend more time answering questions then looking up information in the manual.

Another helpful tip is study FE test taking tips available in forums to help you save time and make better guesses on problems you don't know.  For example, while studying matrices, I would solve the full matrix and then select the correct answer.  After a while I realized that once you solved a few positions in the matrix there was only 1 possible answer.

Shannonsider_2016 said:

Well Moleboy, what's the craic.

Have you tried EIT fast track book? it's an e-book with a ton of questions + their solutions, that was my number 1 resource for studying for the FE and I passed it first time with self-study. It was pretty cheap when I bought it back in 2014.

I used PPI Civil FE quiz bank when I was within 30 days of the exam (bit harder than the test and not as useful to me as the EIT fast track, but it was still OK).

Also found the "FE review by Isaac Wait" on youtube to be pretty good as well.

Biggest tips:

Just do questions over and over again, and mix it up with listening to a few youtube videos on topics you are getting stuck on.

Use an electronic FE_Reference handbook to get used to it, instead of just using a printed copy.

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Craic is good apart from this *****. I'll look up that ebook and ive viewed a couple of those isaac watt videos. They're very good.Cheers for the advice.

Arjay said:

How long ago did you graduate?  There is a free Coursera FE Class that I tried but felt its not formatted for me who graduated 20 yrs ago.

Check it out maybe you'll find it helpful.  For myself, I registered for School of PE, FE Review class for January and Feb 2017.

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I graduated 5 years ago but didnt work in the field.

Whats this free fe class?

pigking8190 said:

Don't be frustrated, I passed mine in 6th time so you are not alone, before that I hated to study those stuff too over and over.  

I took school of PE and go a little deeper for each subject to understand more, and search online to find practice as much as I can. Good luck !!

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Its a relief to know others struggled with this. Cheers for the encouragement.

You could think about taking the general FE. I've heard that it's the easiest as long as you understand chem/phys concepts. I studied for the general FE but realized the night before that I had accidentally signed up for the Civil FE. So much for that!

Do lots of practice problems if you are having issues. I never took any classes so I can't help you with that, but I was about 3 years removed from graduation when I took the test so it is definitely possible to refresh the topics.