Hi all,
I just took the October 2017 TFS PE exam and wanted to say thank you to all before me who shared your experiences. Now that I’ve taken the exam, I can say that your advice was critical in allowing me to prepare adequately for the exam. I feel I did well enough on the exam that I passed, and I have all of you to thank for it. So, thank you.
To pay it forward to future examinees, I’d like to mention a couple of things that I found helpful in my preparations:
1. Ramnares’ (the OP to this topic) advice is gold. Follow Ramnares’ advice and set a schedule for your studying (start early!), and that should set you up to have a great shot at passing the PE exam.
2. Books that I used and found extremely helpful were:
a. MERM (13th Ed) – Must have.
b. Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam (13th Ed) – Very good practice problems.
c. Engineering Unit Conversions (4th Ed) – This is absolutely necessary for the PE exam. Definitely worth the money. Buy this early and use throughout your studying.
d. Mechanical PE Practice Examination (3rd Ed)
e. NCEES’ PE Mechanical: Thermal and Fluids Systems Practice Exam
3. I also briefly used the TFS Six-Minute Solutions book, but I found this book not helpful because (1) the solutions often required major assumptions that were omitted from the problem statements, (2) the solutions were not written well enough to learn fundamentals from, and (3) the solutions often required much, much more time than six minutes.
4. Doing a few things at the start will ensure your studying is efficient and that you’re familiar with how things will be on exam day. For me, these were the following:
a. Set up a 4 foot wide by 3 foot deep section on a table and do all of your practice problems within this space, including the references that you are using. Place any extra materials on the floor beside you in a bin or crate.
b. Tab your MERM like described in previous posts (i.e., the Shaggy tabbing method). I tabbed the first page of each chapter and wrote the chapter number and a shortened title (e.g., for Chapter 17, I wrote “17” and “Fluid Dynamics” on the tab).
c. Copy the MERM Appendix and put it in its own binder.
d. Copy the MERM Index and put it in its own binder (the PDF version of the MERM Index is available for free here:
https://ppi2pass.com/thermal-and-fluids-systems-reference-manual-for-the-mechanical-pe-exam-index-metsidx.html
e. Printout steam tables and psychrometric charts (US and SI at sea level) and place them in a third binder.
5. Use the “Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam (13th Ed)” as your primary source of practice problems. The problems are generally a bit harder/longer than you’ll see on the PE exam, but the solutions will teach you the fundamentals (very important!) and also get you very well acquainted with how to quickly find information in the MERM (extremely important!). To help you identify which sections to study, the MERM publisher PPI has cross-referenced the NCEES Exam Specs with the MERM Chapters in a free “study schedule” available here:
https://ppi2pass.com/mechanical-pe-thermal-and-fluid-systems-study-schedule-metfss.html
My recommendation is to study first the practice problems that are associated with the chapters that relate to the most points from the NCEES Exam Specs. Keep doing passes through the practice problems until you’re able to do them efficiently.
6. While studying, use a highlighter to highlight each equation, table, figure, and conversion factor that you use from the MERM or your units conversion book. This will make it easier for you to identify later on where you should add additional tabs to the MERM or your units conversion book. Also, only write notes with pen the the MERM. Writing with pencil could get you accused of cheating on exam day.
7. Track your time studying, and be honest with the time you’re recording (i.e., don’t count time spent browsing your phone when you inevitably get distracted).
8. About a month out from the exam (even earlier is better), begin doing timed practice exams. Your goal should be to be able to pass the full “Mechanical PE Practice Examination (3rd Ed)” under exam time limits. If you’re like me, you’ll fail miserably on your first time running through this practice exam, which will motivate you to study a lot more. Use the “Mechanical PE Practice Examination (3rd Ed)” as the benchmark for whether you’re ready for the exam.
9. Periodically do practice exams with the “NCEES’ PE Mechanical: Thermal and Fluids Systems Practice Exam”. This will get you familiar with the exam format. This exam is easier than the “Mechanical PE Practice Examination (3rd Ed)” practice exam. In my experience, the actual PE exam was halfway between those two practice exams in terms of difficulty.
10. You should aim to have done each practice exam several times over, under timed conditions each time, before the actual exam roles around.
11. My mistakes during preparation:
a. Don’t spend time reading the MERM cover to cover. I did and absolutely forgot everything before I started doing practice problems. If you want, quickly skim through the MERM initially. The most effective way to read the MERM is to read a single chapter and then work its associated practice problems.
b. Don’t use the six-minute solutions book if you’re taking the TFS exam. It is an ineffective way to study.
c. Set a study schedule early on and stick to it.
12: I studied 330 hours in total. I had to relearn everything because my jobs after college did not have me using any of the fundamentals covered by the PE exam. 330 hours was enough studying to allow me to confidently answer 95% of the questions on the actual PE exam with hardly any time to spare. I’m pretty sure I passed, but I’ll have to wait for the exam results to know for sure.
