I got home from work today and it had finally arrived my Professional Engineer license. I began working towards this goal almost a year ago. For the non-engineers out there the PE is comparable to the Bar Exam for lawyers. About 5 years ago I took the FE exam or fundamentals of engineering. A requirement of taking the PE exam is working in industry for 5 years after the FE. So I want to go over what it took for me to get myself prepared to take this grueling 8 hour exam.
Get committed
The first step to achieve any goal is to get committed for me it was sending in the application. Once I was applied and had paid my fees. I now had a time line 6 months. Once I knew I was admitted to the exam I purchased the best training materials I could find. One of my friends was going to take the exam with me. He wanted to wait for the next round, he has now missed the deadline to register and recently had a kid looks like he has missed the boat. If you want to achieve something do it today. If you wait there will always be a reason why it can wait longer until it's too late.
The Book
The training manual consisted of 75 chapters each with about 30 very difficult example problems. I set a schedule at first I figured I needed to do about 5 chapters a week leaving about 4 weeks for review of course life got in the way of my schedule Thanksgiving, Christmas, an I don't want to today attitude. Anyways I revised the schedule and eventually was down to a chapter a day with two weeks review. I buckled down because there was no way I could fail. I completed the entire manual.
Review
I took a practice exam part one the first weekend 4 hours. I got 85% and the ones I got wrong were mostly silly mistakes. The next weekend I took part 2 I got about 70% and there were a few questions I didn't complete or know how to solve. I was fairly confident this was a passing score.
Exam Day
I arrived at the exam at 7am there were about 300 examinees in all engineering and surveying disciplines. The first part of the exam was a lot harder than I expected also I had a bit of a potty emergency midway. I completed the first part knowing full well the second half was going to be much more difficult. I guessed I got about 80%. There was a two hour lunch break but I didn't eat too much. The second half began and it was so hard. only a handful of questions were similar to any of the example problems or practice exam problems. They really tested if you understood the material instead of just plugging in equations. There were about 5-6 out of the 40 problems I was completely stumped on I left feeling like so what good enough. I guessed I got about 65% which should have passed me. The thing that bothered me the most was that I would never see the solutions to those problems. I would never know what my score was which ones I got right and which ones wrong. As an engineer this is torture.
Results
I got my results letter about 6 weeks later. As I opened the letter I hesitated, what if I failed... Everyone knew I was taking this exam all my co-workers, friends, and family. since the exam I had been asked about 50 times if I passed. I gave the same response. I think so. I guess I got about 70% but that doesn't mean anything since the scoring system is very complicated.
What I really learned
The exam is supposed to test if you have learned things like Calculus, Physics, Thermodynamics, and even Economics. I did learn a little bit more about those topics, but what I really learned was schedules need to be continuously revised if you expect to meet a fixed delivery date. Go in order and make some progress everyday. Don't take shortcuts you'll regret them in the long run. And no matter how well you prepare it's going to be harder than you thought.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to me brag a bit. I'm really proud of what I accomplished. If you're interested in taking the PE exam and want more tips comment below. If you do it remember It's ok to brag a little and after your exam go out and have a few beers you earned it.
