It was only a matter of time. Yes, Civil Engineering Academy is now building up content surrounding the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam (FE Exam).
Why are we doing this? Well, it's obvious that the FE exam is the first step to obtaining your PE. You have to have the FE in order to even get the PE. In that light, we want to help students and others obtain their FE so that they can eventually obtain their PE license later down the road.
The FE is no small feat. It is designed for graduate students or those about ready to wrap up their undergraduate engineering degrees.
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The FE is now a computer based exam, when I took it it was a paper based exam similar to the current PE exam. Everyone took the same morning portion (General) and then you could chose what depth section you wanted, wither that was General again or you could choose Civil (more discipline specific). Today you have one choice - FE Civil. It's basically the same as the old General-Civil FE exam.
The exam contains 110 multiple-choice questions that you are given 6 hours to complete. With all the beginning tutorials and agreements you really end up with 5 hours and 20 minutes and a scheduled 25 minute break. It is not open book so you have to be prepared. The only reference you get is the NCEES Handbook that contains all the equations and information you need to pass. This will be electronic too so the exam and the handbook will sit side-by-side on your monitor.
If you want to see the NCEES Handbook and what the exam looks like then check out this video below. Keep in mind that you can get a free electronic copy of the handbook from the NCEES website or you can order a physical copy for a fee so you can get familiar with it:
Check out this video below to learn more the exam-day experience:
What Does Civil Engineering Academy Offer?
So, what will we offer here at CEA? Well I'm glad you asked. We will be posting a TON of free resources as well as not-so-free resources outlining where to get the best books for studying.
We also created a complete 110-question practice exam that you can check out right here, or by click the sweet image below:
The FE and the PE are very similar. The morning portion is more general and the afternoon is more discipline specific. I would say that the FE is more heavily focused on math, probability, and statistics and the PE is heavy on the 5 disciplines that you can really dive into at work and school (Environmental and Hydraulics, Geotechnical, Structural, Construction, Transportation).
Wrapping it Up
The FE is a must for any civil engineer. For most it is required to even graduate from college and here at CEA we know that the FE is really your first step in obtaining your PE. Our entire goal of this site is to help you on your own journey to obtaining your PE and taking and passing the FE is part of that. So with that, we look forward to providing more resources on the civil FE and hope that you find it helpful for either yourself or others.
We really appreciate you spreading the word about the site too! If this electronic eBook of this exam passes your satisfaction then we most likely will make a hard copy available on Amazon. So, if you see anything that you'd like to point out or that needs some fixing then please don't hesitate to let me know (I am human of course)!
So to those studying for the FE, good luck and get those practice problems in!