Just passed the new CBT FE exam

ABEngineer · Feb 16, 2014

Hi everyone, I've just passed the new CBT FE Exam (Others Discipline) after four...yes! 4 failed attempts . It has been a long and emotional journey since the start with the dream of career advancement becoming an engineer in training and make your way up to becoming a registered professional engineer.

In the past I had to wait for 6 months for the next paper version of the FE Exam, it took me like 2 years to pass it. And due to the fact that I was a full time employee at some point, a student later on and with family obligations, I was never prepared enough to write the exam, especially after waiting for 2 months to get your results, you end up have like 4 months or less before you sit for the next one.

It cost me a fair amount of money and time being invested towards this exam. I also took the School of Pe preparation course which was very useful for me. After I completed the online course, I sat for the exam and failed, simply because I solely relied on the course without getting myself familiar with the study material from the Michael Lindeburg Review Manual, which was by the way very useful and will help absorb allot of the subjects especially if you are out of school for long time. I also used the 1001 question book and it was useful too, but never gone through all of the problems.

After finally passing the exam, my advice for those who didn't pass or going to sit for the exam for the first time, please don't give up. Keep trying and trying and trying till you nail this exam. I've seen it all and at some point I doubted myself and got very frustrated with it and felt like I will never pass it, but I kept going and every time I fail, I just go back to my notes and start all over again, because I knew that its only a matter of time till I accomplish my dream and be able to put it behind and move one for a better future.

I will be happy to answer any related questions regarding the new CBT FE Exam (especially for the "Others Discipline") and I wish all the best for all of you.

Jogfat · Feb 17, 2014

Congrats ABEngineer!!

I passed my exam on the 3rd try so I understand what you mean by not giving up! And it sure feels so great when you finally pass the FE/EIT exam! Best of luck with everything else!

ABEngineer · Feb 17, 2014

Jogfat said:
Congrats ABEngineer!!

I passed my exam on the 3rd try so I understand what you mean by not giving up! And it sure feels so great when you finally pass the FE/EIT exam! Best of luck with everything else!

Thank you so much, Jogfat!

It sure feels great and it worth every penny, time and sweat that was put in to accomplish it.

I wish everybody would pass this exam and not to struggle like I did and I will do my best to help and give advice to whoever needs it throughout this post.

All the best with your PE.

Cheers

jperry1221 · Feb 17, 2014

Congrats on your accomplishment. I was in pretty much the same boat as you. I failed it 3 times and finally passed it last April. I had 2 kids while I was in school and working full time to support them. By the time I passed the FE, we had another child that June. I was so excited when I passed and it couldn't have come at a better time. I was lucky enough my boss let me study at work the last time when we didn't have much going on.

ABEngineer · Feb 17, 2014

jperry1221 said:
Congrats on your accomplishment. I was in pretty much the same boat as you. I failed it 3 times and finally passed it last April. I had 2 kids while I was in school and working full time to support them. By the time I passed the FE, we had another child that June. I was so excited when I passed and it couldn't have come at a better time. I was lucky enough my boss let me study at work the last time when we didn't have much going on.

Thank you for your sincere wishes. Ironically, my situation was the same as I had 2 kids and my third baby was born on June while I was in the preparations to take the FE exam.

Best of luck getting your PE.

Cheers

ABEngineer · Feb 17, 2014

I highly recommend that exam candidates would check the NCEES pdf file for exam related subjects with ranges in the new CBT exam before start studying for the exam as some subjects were disregarded such as Geology for the Other's Discipline CBT FE Exam.

As for the review manuals, I used the M. Lindeburge FE Review manual which was very helpful, i also took a preparation course with School of PE. I also had the 1001 problems book as well (but didn't go through all of problems) and I did buy 50 questions from the NCEES website as well, but honestly I didn't even see them as I was very busy and running out of time.

I got my result in exactly six (6) days which was amazing. No more 8 weeks to wait for results anymore.

[SIZE=10pt]Some helpful exam tips:[/SIZE]
- Work as many problems as you can
- If you can't get the answer for a problem in the exam, just don't spend much time on it and try to collect as many right answers as you can and then try to make an educated guess on the ones you don't know, because the time is really critical.
- Download the new supplied reference manual and use it when solving problems. Use the "Search" feature because this is what will use in the actual exam.

All the best

canyiah · Feb 18, 2014

Did you take school of or again ?

ABEngineer · Feb 18, 2014

canyiah said:
Did you take school of or again ?

I took the school of PE refresher course on 2012, but at the time I didn't pass the next FE exam so I notified them and they let me attend the course again free of charge and that's because I haven't missed any of the lectures so I got a free second chance to attend the online course. That was their only condition in order to heave a free repeat, which was good for me.

You also get to keep the material they provide you with when registering for their refresher course, so I used their materials for the FE Exam subjects along with the M. Lindeburge FE Review Manual and the 1001 Problems book as well.

Hope this answers your question.

Good Luck in your study.

UKentuckyEngineer · Feb 18, 2014

AB, I recently completed the School of PE course but it didn't include the Safety items in my lecture material. Without going into much detail, will all the items needed to answer these questions be in the review handbook? Also, how would you rate the overall difficulty of the exam compared to previous versions? My last score I answered 75 on the morning correct, circuits have always been my downfall due to being an Other Disciplines examinee, and in the afternoon answered 37 correct but didn't pass. I'm taking the exam at the end of this month and would like to know if any areas specifically stood out to you being rather difficult than the other sections that we are to be tested on. Thanks for any info and congratulations. Hopefully I will be able to come back with good news at the beginning of March.

ABEngineer · Feb 18, 2014

UKentuckyEngineer said:
AB, I recently completed the School of PE course but it didn't include the Safety items in my lecture material. Without going into much detail, will all the items needed to answer these questions be in the review handbook? Also, how would you rate the overall difficulty of the exam compared to previous versions? My last score I answered 75 on the morning correct, circuits have always been my downfall due to being an Other Disciplines examinee, and in the afternoon answered 37 correct but didn't pass. I'm taking the exam at the end of this month and would like to know if any areas specifically stood out to you being rather difficult than the other sections that we are to be tested on. Thanks for any info and congratulations. Hopefully I will be able to come back with good news at the beginning of March.

I'm sure you will come back with good news. Believe me it's just a matter of time until you pass this obstacle and put it behind your back.

My previous 4 scores based on my diag. reports were as follows:

83

122

123

111

About the school of pe online course I had back on 2012, the instructor and I remember his name was Dr. R. Kommalapati, he taught us the safety stuff included in the Biology section and what he covers was good enough to work the safety problems in the new CBT Other FE Exam. Also the Biology problems file they provide you with has lots of safety problems so you should be okay as far as safety's concern.

Remember that the new CBT FE Others Exam does NOT include Biology as a separate subject.

Based on my "Long" experience with this exam, I can tell you that the new CBT exam is easier than the paper version for sure and shorter of course.

Also one critical piece of information about the exam is that the problems DO NOT come in order like the paper version. Before you had for ex. from 100-120 or so will be Math and so fourth, but now it's all mixed up.

Thank you & wish you all the best.

canyiah · Feb 19, 2014

Thanks for the reply I have more questions if you remember how difficult were the conic section problems ie) find the general equation of a conic give x points? or was it more like they gave you a part of what you needed without you having to find it? was the 1001 problems like the other Lindeburg book either to hard or to easy?

ABEngineer · Feb 19, 2014

canyiah said:
Thanks for the reply I have more questions if you remember how difficult were the conic section problems ie) find the general equation of a conic give x points? or was it more like they gave you a part of what you needed without you having to find it? was the 1001 problems like the other Lindeburg book either to hard or to easy?

The rate of difficulty may vary from one person to another depending on how well your preparation is throughout your study, but generally speaking I can say is that the math part wasn't bad at all.

The M. Lindeburge and 1001 problems review manual would probably have reasonably difficult problems if not more difficult than the actual exam.

When it come's to math, understanding the main concept is more effective than just knowing where the formulas are. So focusing on the math is important as it has a fair portion of the problems in the exam.

John QPE · Feb 19, 2014

Congratulations!

ABEngineer · Feb 19, 2014

John Q said:
Congratulations!

Thanks allot.

Much appreciated.

UKentuckyEngineer · Feb 19, 2014

ABEngineer said:
Also one critical piece of information about the exam is that the problems DO NOT come in order like the paper version. Before you had for ex. from 100-120 or so will be Math and so fourth, but now it's all mixed up.

Thank you & wish you all the best.

I was under the impression that the problems weren't listed in the front like they were in the others but still grouped together by subject content. This puts a little more nerves in the belly going in. Thanks for the well wishes and I hope that I am finally able to put this obstacle behind me. I've heard numerous people tell me that the FE was much more difficult than the PE. If that is the case I'm sure you are well on your way to obtaining your stamp.

ABEngineer · Feb 19, 2014

UKentuckyEngineer said:
ABEngineer said:

Also one critical piece of information about the exam is that the problems DO NOT come in order like the paper version. Before you had for ex. from 100-120 or so will be Math and so fourth, but now it's all mixed up.

Thank you & wish you all the best.

Click to expand...

I was under the impression that the problems weren't listed in the front like they were in the others but still grouped together by subject content. This puts a little more nerves in the belly going in. Thanks for the well wishes and I hope that I am finally able to put this obstacle behind me. I've heard numerous people tell me that the FE was much more difficult than the PE. If that is the case I'm sure you are well on your way to obtaining your stamp.

Please note that most of the subjects in the FE Exam are related and sometime you kinda wonder which subject are you answering right now. I had this with the old paper version of the FE exam as all of a sudden I find myself solving a problem that belongs to a different section, but this what engineering is all about I guess. All math, chemistry, thermodynamics ......etc are pretty much related.

Also the blessing of having a "searchable" reference manual helped allot in locating the equations faster than before.

I'm sure you will do just fine, just do your part and study well and then hope for the best.

Thanks for your sincere wishes.

canyiah · Feb 21, 2014

Do you recall how much geometry questions you encountered. I hoping they were straight forward like you have a elliptical track with a width of x and a height of x find the equation if the width is along the x axis.

ABEngineer · Feb 21, 2014

I can't really tell, but with mathematics you just have to be prepared for anything throughout extensive studying.

Believe me. the most valuable investment in this exam is studying the math which will benefit you not only in the exam but in your career as well.

Practice, Practice, Practice problems as many as you can.

ABEngineer · Feb 23, 2014

WARNING .......To all FE Exam takers............The TIME is against YOU!!

You have 110 problems to solve in less than 6 hours (including introduction and a survey)....so with simple calculations you will get around 3 minutes or less for each problem.

Now, we all know that......But what you don't know (unless you've taken the CBT exam of course) is that after 57 questions you get an optional 25 minutes break ending the first half of the exam and they don't show you how much you have spent or left for the second half.

Let me explain.....Before with the old paper version they used to give you 4 hrs for the morning session with a count down every now and then to keep you a ware of the time and how much time left you got. In this CBT version you do have to calculate your time left by yourself which is found to be confusing and distracting. So what happens is that you "typically" use the time given for the morning session and also some time from the afternoon session and end up having much "less" time for the remaining 53 questions.

It's easier to track time when you have a certain hours set for the amount of questions given, but on this CBT version you only see the time through the computer clock which doesn't tell you how much time you spent per question and how much time left.

What happened to me was that I came back from my 25 minutes break to find myself having less than an hour and a half (1.5hrs) which means I'm a full hour behind and that put tremendous stress on me in order to answer all of the remaining problems "correctly" in the short time available.

As I said earlier....Time is really critical for the new version and although the CBT FE Exam is shorter, it's more tricky to fall into the time trap, so just be a ware of that and try to skip the problems you don't know or maybe will take you more than 3 minutes to solve and head for the sweet problems that get you more points and then flag the skipped ones and later come back to make an educated guess and hopefully would have accumulated enough markes to pass this exam once and for all.

Mike in Gastonia · Feb 24, 2014

ABEngineer said:
WARNING .......To all FE Exam takers............The TIME is against YOU!!

You have 110 problems to solve in less than 6 hours (including introduction and a survey)....so with simple calculations you will get around 3 minutes or less for each problem.

Now, we all know that......But what you don't know (unless you've taken the CBT exam of course) is that after 57 questions you get an optional 25 minutes break ending the first half of the exam and they don't show you how much you have spent or left for the second half.

Let me explain.....Before with the old paper version they used to give you 4 hrs for the morning session with a count down every now and then to keep you a ware of the time and how much time left you got. In this CBT version you do have to calculate your time left by yourself which is found to be confusing and distracting. So what happens is that you "typically" use the time given for the morning session and also some time from the afternoon session and end up having much "less" time for the remaining 53 questions.

It's easier to track time when you have a certain hours set for the amount of questions given, but on this CBT version you only see the time through the computer clock which doesn't tell you how much time you spent per question and how much time left.

What happened to me was that I came back from my 25 minutes break to find myself having less than an hour and a half (1.5hrs) which means I'm a full hour behind and that put tremendous stress on me in order to answer all of the remaining problems "correctly" in the short time available.

As I said earlier....Time is really critical for the new version and although the CBT FE Exam is shorter, it's more tricky to fall into the time trap, so just be a ware of that and try to skip the problems you don't know or maybe will take you more than 3 minutes to solve and head for the sweet problems that get you more points and then flag the skipped ones and later come back to make an educated guess and hopefully would have accumulated enough markes to pass this exam once and for all.

It looks to me like they give you a countdown clock in the upper right hand corner with 5 hours and 20 minutes on it from the beginning. So if you look at the clock when you take your break, you know exactly how much time you have left, correct? True, it looks like they've made you responsible for how/where you spend your time. But isn't that a good thing?

Just passed the new CBT FE exam

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