# FE Exam Format



## udubb2012 (Jul 17, 2017)

I am preparing to take the FE Electrical exam this weekend. However, I haven't seen many details about the format of the exam. Here are a few questions I have for anyone that may have previously taken the exam.

- The practice exams that I have taken essentially follow the FE subject outline. (i.e. the first 11 are Math questions, the next 4 are Statistics questions, the next 3 are ethics questions, etc.) Does the FE exam follow the same format, or does the order of questions not relate to the subject it is associated with?

- I have seen where it is broken up as two (2) sections of 55 questions each with a total time limit of 6 hours (including break and intro). Is there an actual time limit for each section, or will it allow as long as desired in the first section? Obviously, it is not wise to waste over 50% of the time in the first section though.

- I have seen on a previous failure report that it indicates the average score for a passing exam is ~10/15 on each subject. This would relate to a ~67% - 70% _weighted score._ Is there a rough estimate anywhere of what the normal scaling factor is? I would assume around a 60% raw score would be necessary to achieve a 67% weighted score?

Also, any suggestions from past experience when taking the FE would be helpful.

Regards,

Chad


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## Frustrated Engineer (Jul 18, 2017)

udubb2012 said:


> I am preparing to take the FE Electrical exam this weekend. However, I haven't seen many details about the format of the exam. Here are a few questions I have for anyone that may have previously taken the exam.
> 
> - The practice exams that I have taken essentially follow the FE subject outline. (i.e. the first 11 are Math questions, the next 4 are Statistics questions, the next 3 are ethics questions, etc.) Does the FE exam follow the same format, or does the order of questions not relate to the subject it is associated with?
> 
> ...


Hi Chad,

I just recently passed the FE Civil and I can fill you in.

The exam is pretty much formatted in the same order that is portrayed in the outline general first then specific topic after that (ie electrical for you). The test is 6 hours with an optional 25 minute break that does not deduct from your overall test time. The first half is separate from the second half, meaning that after you've completed the first 55-56 questions you hit the "end session" button and you cannot go back to this portion of the exam after that. Then it repeats the same for the second half. As for the time splitting, if you were to finish the first half in say 2 hours, then you will have 4 hours for the last half for example.

As for the scoring, nobody really knows exactly how to figure out what score you need. I failed the exam a decent amount of times and I was in the 50's range for most of them so I would say that your 60% may be pretty close to correct.

Remember that the biggest rule of thumb for this exam is to know the reference manual as well as you can. By the time I finally passed I had memorized a good bit of the necessary portions of it which helped my speed. Also, speed is very important. If you read a problem and don't know immediately what to do and how to solve it all the way through, skip it and come back. Or if you already know you're not good in a particular subject then go ahead and skip all of the ones in that subject and come back after you've already answered the one's that you do know well.

I hope this helped! Good luck and let us know how it went!


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## udubb2012 (Jul 19, 2017)

Frustrated Engineer said:


> Hi Chad,
> 
> I just recently passed the FE Civil and I can fill you in.
> 
> ...


Very helpful. Thank you for the response.

I have taken a practice exam and scored in the 50's. If it was an untimed test, I would have scored in the mid 80's, it just took me a while on some of the questions early in the exam, which caused me to start having to guess too early in the second section. My hope was that it would be formatted exactly as the guide, with all similar questions grouped together. This will allow me to entirely skip the two subjects I am fairly slow with in order to get through the others and then come back at the end to answer them. In the practice exam, I felt like I missed out on two many easy questions in the last two subjects, which I am pretty strong in, due to a lack of time.

The one good thing with the amount of studying I have done is that I know a lot of the reference manual pretty well. I initially intended to just search it via ctrl+f; however, I find myself now knowing exactly what page to flip to for various questions. This will be even easier if all of the subject questions are grouped together.


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