# Anyone use text book "FE Civil Practice"



## RHJ (May 28, 2018)

Hi. I am civil engineer

I would like to get some advices about text book *"FE Civil Practice"* if you use. (Attached is picture of text book)

I bought this book two month ago. Now most of questions has been able to be solved except Topic V: Environmental Engineering. For all of questions in Topic V, I could not find the page that I should refer to in Reference Handbook. I searched the section of "Environmental Engineering" in Reference Handbook, but I could not find. Which page should I refer to in Reference Handbook to solve Topic V?

Also, I have one more question. In the section of "19 Foundations" (In Topic VI: Geotechnical Engineering) in the text book, some questions have to be referred to the table of Terzaghi bearing capacity factors. However, I could not find the table in Reference Handbook. Which page should I refer to in Reference Handbook?

I am very appreciate if you advise to my questions. Thanks


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## Domestos_WC (May 30, 2018)

There is a lot of practice problems in that book that are not referenced in the FE reference manual. Also, questions are much more complicated than the actual exam questions. Just my opinion.


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## RHJ (May 31, 2018)

Domestos_WC said:


> There is a lot of practice problems in that book that are not referenced in the FE reference manual. Also, questions are much more complicated than the actual exam questions. Just my opinion.


There are some questions in the text book that are not referenced in Reference Handbook as you said. Anyway I will try to take actual exam once to know actual exam level. Thank you very much for your opinion.


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## Domestos_WC (Jun 1, 2018)

I would recommend getting the ncees practice exam instead of going to the actual exam to waste your time and money. You can buy it online. 

I took the FE civil 2 weeks ago and I found out I passed two days ago. That was my second try. At my first try I failed though, but I don't regret it that was a trigger for me to prepare much much more for the second attempt (I put around 30hrs preparing for my first try vs approx 100hrs into my second try). 

It's good to "to give it a try" for the first time but only when you feel like you have a good chance to pass. For the second try, you need to be absolutely prepared, or maybe like 80% prepared like I was 

Anyway, Lindeburg's materials are very good for prep and believe me, the fact that they cover even more than the actual exam scope may only help you. I know it can be very annoying when you try to find the reference in the handbook and you're not able to, so you don't know whether this kind of question may happen on the exam or not. I went through that too. That's why I would recommend spending like a week just studying the FE reference manual on its own. That's a good technique too btw, get a reference handbook + Lindeburg's review manual, study the equations from the reference manual and if there's something unclear, check them in the review's manual. It's like studying from the different perspective, instead of starting from the question to equation to solution, start from the equation and then check what kind of problems and question you may get on the exam. it's like going backwards. 

I used Lindeburg's review manual, practice problems, bought the NCEES practice exam and at the end of the day I ended up getting PPI2Pass on-demand course as well.


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