So you decided to take the plunge and get on a path to get your professional engineering license, but you are not sure when you should take the engineering exam or when to seriously start studying for it. In this post I will give you some guidance regarding these two dilemmas so you can make sure that you are on the right track.
Fundamentals of Engineering/Engineer-In-Training (FE/EIT) Exam
I suggest you take this exam no earlier than your junior year in college and no later than a couple of years after you graduate. Your senior year in college is the ideal time to take this exam because you would have taken most (if not all) of the classes that the FE/EIT exam materials are drawn from. Not only that, but by taking the FE exam in your senior year, these engineering materials are probably still fresh in your head so you don’t have to spend a lot of time studying and refreshing your memories for them. If you wait too long after college to take the FE exam you will likely forget a lot of the engineering materials on the exam because you don’t use them in your work and will then have to spend more time studying.
In terms of studying duration, in theory you have been prepping for the FE exam since freshman year of college because the school materials are similar to the materials that you will be asked on the exam. However, you still do need to sit down and do some studying for this test because it is unlikely that all the materials on the test are covered in your school courses. My suggest is that you take a minimum of 2-3 months before the FE/EIT exam to “refresh” your mind on materials you already know and study a little bit on materials you are not familiar with.
Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) Exam
You should take the PE exam as soon as you are eligible to take it. Your eligibility to take the test depends on the requirements of your specific state board. For example, in California, you can take the exam as early as two years after you obtain your undergraduate degree and one year after you obtain your graduate degree. The advantage of taking the PE exam early is that you are still in a student mindset and you are still probably good at taking tests. The PE exam doesn’t test as much on your work experience but rather more on engineering concepts that you can study for so it’s good to still have those test taking skills from school.
Some people I know have told me that they started studying for the PE exam a year before the actual exam. I’m not sure if they were 100% serious, but if they were indeed serious, then I think they wasted a lot of time studying. If you start studying too early, you will most likely forget a lot of what you studied and will have to restudy those subjects again closer to exam time. However, on the other end of the spectrum, if you start studying too late, you will run out of time and will not be able to study everything you need to before the test. For the 8-hour PE exam, I recommend you spend a minimum of 3-4 months of studying (i.e. if the exam is in October then you need to start studying in earnest in August at the latest).
Structural Engineering (SE) Exam
The SE exam is a mixture of knowing structural engineering concepts and knowing how to solve problems that you might encounter at work. I recommend getting a good amount of structural engineering work experience under your belt before attempting to take this test. Make sure to ask your boss to let you do design projects involving all four structural materials: concrete, wood, masonry, and steel. Try to also work on projects that have relatively large wind and seismic loads so you can gain knowledge and experience to tackle the lateral portion of the exam. I think the best age to take this exam is somewhere around your late 20s or early 30s. If you wait too long beyond this time frame your brain will not be as sharp as a younger person even if you have gained additional experience from work. In addition, if you wait too long, you might be starting a family or have a more senior position at work which will take time away from studying for this exam.
The SE exam does require serious studying. This is an open book test, so a lot time will be spent looking in references and codes for equations (unless you have a photographic memory and know all the structural engineering equations!) Even if you are confidence in your structural engineering knowledge, you need to practice on being efficient at finding the relevant references/codes to use during the exam. You should plan on a minimum 4-5 months of intense studying right before the exam if you plan on taking the whole 16-hour exam in one sitting. My suggestion is to use the early months of studying to review concepts you are not expert in. For example, my SE exam was in October, so I used June to study and refresh my memories on the advanced subjects such collector design that I did not have a good grasp on before.
I hope you now have a good idea of when and how much to study for the FE, PE, and SE exam. I’m sure you are now wondering what constitute “studying.” Click here for the post where I discuss that very subject!
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