FE Exam
So, yesterday from 8:00 to 5:45, I was taking the FE Exam so that I'm allowed to be an engineer. This was a big, major exam. Now, only 1 Grove City student in the last 11 years has failed the exam, but that doesn't keep people from being nervous.
Come lunch (after the morning 4 hour section), I was completely unworried. The exam is in two parts. The general section in the morning, 120 question in the morning worth 1 point each, and the specialized afternoon section, 60 questions worth two points each. You need somewhere between 110 and 130 points to pass, usually. If I scored less than 100 points on the morning section, I'd be very surprised. Now, spark-e's have it a bit harder, since the morning section is biased toward mece's, but still. A lot of the mece stuff is really just physics 1 applied to engineering situation. So, still harder, but not bad.
To give an example of some of the difficulty of some of the morning questions
"Given a torque T on a rod of diameter D with Property 1 of I and Property 2 of G, how much does it twist?" How to answer? Look in the equation reference book we're given for the exam, find the equation, look at which answer it matches, and mark that one down. Literally. The question could have been
"Can you find the equation for how much a rod twists in the book in front of you?
A. Yes
B. No
C. What book?
D. I can't read"
The afternoon section was definitely harder. You could choose one of seven exams for the afternoon, a second, harder general exam, and then electrical, mechanical, chemical, industrial, civil, and environmental engineering. I took the mece one, which went much further in depth, even requiring some stuff I haven't taken classes on, but given the morning part, I still only needed something around 10 right out of 60, and I easily got that. There were only four questions I had to guess on since all the rest I managed to find equations in the book that looked like they were the right ones.
Which leads to a question. There are schools where large percentages of people fail this exam. HOW?! What are they teaching these kids that they can't pass this thing? Given four hours, I'd be willing to bet that most of you reading this could pull a 50% on the morning portion. Now, it'd probably take you all four hours, since you'd be constantly searching the book, not entirely sure of what you're looking for, but me, having had classes on everything that was on it, was done in 2.5 hours. Are mece's at other schools not required to take differential equations? Or thermodynamics? Or any sort of fluids class? It's just crazy.
And a bit of advice for any GCC meces who might be reading this: Take Advanced Thermodynamics as one of your MECE electives. That class teaching you HUGE amounts of material that's on the FE exam. Looking back, taking that class was one of the best decisions I've made here. Spark-e's, get to be friends with a mece and get them to work with you on basic thermo and mechanics. Even a simple knowledge of the two will help you immensely on the exam. In exchange, make sure they know how to do basic circuit analysis, since there's some of that and meces generally aren't too good at that.
Anyway, that's it for now. Time to do some work.
Come lunch (after the morning 4 hour section), I was completely unworried. The exam is in two parts. The general section in the morning, 120 question in the morning worth 1 point each, and the specialized afternoon section, 60 questions worth two points each. You need somewhere between 110 and 130 points to pass, usually. If I scored less than 100 points on the morning section, I'd be very surprised. Now, spark-e's have it a bit harder, since the morning section is biased toward mece's, but still. A lot of the mece stuff is really just physics 1 applied to engineering situation. So, still harder, but not bad.
To give an example of some of the difficulty of some of the morning questions
"Given a torque T on a rod of diameter D with Property 1 of I and Property 2 of G, how much does it twist?" How to answer? Look in the equation reference book we're given for the exam, find the equation, look at which answer it matches, and mark that one down. Literally. The question could have been
"Can you find the equation for how much a rod twists in the book in front of you?
A. Yes
B. No
C. What book?
D. I can't read"
The afternoon section was definitely harder. You could choose one of seven exams for the afternoon, a second, harder general exam, and then electrical, mechanical, chemical, industrial, civil, and environmental engineering. I took the mece one, which went much further in depth, even requiring some stuff I haven't taken classes on, but given the morning part, I still only needed something around 10 right out of 60, and I easily got that. There were only four questions I had to guess on since all the rest I managed to find equations in the book that looked like they were the right ones.
Which leads to a question. There are schools where large percentages of people fail this exam. HOW?! What are they teaching these kids that they can't pass this thing? Given four hours, I'd be willing to bet that most of you reading this could pull a 50% on the morning portion. Now, it'd probably take you all four hours, since you'd be constantly searching the book, not entirely sure of what you're looking for, but me, having had classes on everything that was on it, was done in 2.5 hours. Are mece's at other schools not required to take differential equations? Or thermodynamics? Or any sort of fluids class? It's just crazy.
And a bit of advice for any GCC meces who might be reading this: Take Advanced Thermodynamics as one of your MECE electives. That class teaching you HUGE amounts of material that's on the FE exam. Looking back, taking that class was one of the best decisions I've made here. Spark-e's, get to be friends with a mece and get them to work with you on basic thermo and mechanics. Even a simple knowledge of the two will help you immensely on the exam. In exchange, make sure they know how to do basic circuit analysis, since there's some of that and meces generally aren't too good at that.
Anyway, that's it for now. Time to do some work.