FE Afternoon Test - General or Mechanical?

[kevindurette]

I think my chances of passing the general test or the mechanical test are almost even, leaning a bit toward the general side. I've been out of school for about two and a half years now, but I'm a proficient self-learner, and I tend to read a lot of geeky stuff both in and out of my field. I'm willing to study broadly or narrowly as necessary.

I want to prepare to take the FE exam, but I'd like one more piece of information before I decide whether to take the mechanical test in the afternoon or the general test. Is there a difference as far as my career is concerned? Looking ahead, is one better than the other?

 

[NCCaryME]

It shouldn't make any difference for your future career, the P.E. license that you get will be exactly the same. You won't be limited in the type(s) of engineering you practice by the test you took, only by your competencies. Good luck!

 

[zdas04]

NCCarryME is exactly right. No one will even know which afternoon test you took, and if they did know they wouldn't care. The FE as a whole is a worthwhile credential, but it doesn't indicate a claim of specific expertise beyond Engineering Fundementals. No one ever needs to know how you got it (i.e., passed the first time or had to try a few times, took the general or ME afternoon session, etc.).

David

 

[dvd]

If you are a mechanical engineer studying mechanical engineering may be of benefit to you at some time in your career.

 

[grimmy65]

I recently passsed the exam with taking the mechanical section. I was out of school for a bit before I sat for it, much like yourself. I have heard that the general afternoon section is intended for juniors in an undergrad program who have not taken the upper level courses in thier discipline to be able to complete the discipline specific afternoon sections.

I recomend getting the ME practice book from PPI. It was great practice to be able to work problems since it had been a while since I had to work problems school style like that...and that is my advise to you: Work as many problems as you can. If there is a test prep course at a nearby school that helps too. They dont just refresh, they teach you how to shortcut problems and other helpful tricks.

Good luck.

 

[ShaggyPE]

I agree with the previous posters. I might lean towards recommending the general afternoon. But it is a real tossup.

In addition to getting the FERM (Fundamentals of Enginnering Reference Manual) from PPI, check out the following websites:

http://www.engineerboards.com

http://www.ppi2pass.com

Both have good message boards geared towards people taking and passing the FE exam and PE exams.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional
Certified COSMOSWorks Designer Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Sheet Metal Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Weldment Specialist

 

[Yagonyonok]

I agree with the previous posters as well. I took the general in the afternoon (because it was my junior year and I had not taken several of the subjects that were on the mechanical afternoon section).

The best advice I could give, besides what has already been given, is to be very familiar with the reference manual that you will have during the test. Many of the questions were easily anwered if you knew where to look.

Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.
-A R Dykes

 

[ShaggyPE]

Oh yeah... forgot about that. The only reference you use on the exam is the one provided. Get a copy of that and become very familiar with it.

Use the FERM as a guidline on what to study. It will probably also help you decide which afternoon to take.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional
Certified COSMOSWorks Designer Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Sheet Metal Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Weldment Specialist

 

[JohnRBaker]

Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.
-A R Dykes

I have this one hanging on my office wall:

Blessed are those who bring forth
marvelous devices through precise calculations
plus the necessary fudge factor
for they shall be called
Design Engineers
-unknown

And then there's this one, also from my office walls:

Whenever you look at a piece of work
and you think the fellow was crazy,
then you want to pay some attention
to that. One of you is likely to be, and
you had better find out which one it is.
It makes an awful lot of difference.
-Charles F. Kettering

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Jabberwocky]

As I recall, the general test went back further to basic principles like calculus, algebra, and geometry - the mechanical section had specific thermodynamics and kinematics questions. I'm pretty sure I peeked ahead during the morning session and decided based on that, it wasn't like you had to declare ahead of time which section you wanted.

As has been said, nobody will ever know or care which section you took as long as you passed.

 

[Eleventy]

FWIW the general consensus among the people I talked to during/after the FE was that everybody took the general since it looked a lot easier than the mechanical.

 

[MechEng2005]

I took the mechanical portion because I didn't want to take the same test as all the other disciplines of engineers. How can I feel superior as a ME if I got the same (or lower!) grade on the general test. Better off taking the mechanical test and just assuming I would have done better than everybody if I had taken the general.

Just kidding of course...
MechEng2005

 

[HgTX]

I did civil, not mechanical, but some of my answer may be applicable. The afternoon civil test focused on what I had learned recently or was in the process of learning, so it was fresh in my mind. It even covered some things I hadn't gotten to yet (since I took the test at the beginning of my senior year with almost two semesters to go), but the formulas in the manual combined with some common sense were enough to save me.

Most of my classmates took the general test, and complained long and loud afterward about how miserable it was, because it got very deeply into all that stuff they hadn't had to think about in a couple of years--chemistry, advanced calculus, etc.

Your ME classes are more recent than your general classes, and are reinforced with your current work. It will probably be easier to take the ME test.

But others have answered your question accurately--it makes no difference for your career which one you took.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[JohnRBaker]

I've been watching this thread for sometime now and I have to ask, when was this option added, to either go specific or general in the afternoon section, to what we called the 'EIT' exam back in 1971 when I took it? If I recall correctly, we had no options whatsoever as to what we answered in the first exam (that came only in the second, or 'Professional' exam).

BTW, as an interesting story, when I was preparing for the 'EIT' exam (I was a soon to be graduating senior with a BSME) the issue of whether people could use electronic calculators came up. It was about this time that the first HP35 handheld calculators were coming on the scene and one guy who had signed up to take the 'EIT' exam had one and he was demanding that he be allowed to use it for the exam. Well apparently this had never been an issue before and the initial reply back was that it would NOT be allowed, at which point the guy threatened to sue the Michigan State Licensing Board (actually I think it was his father who threatened to sue as he was the one who had paid the $400+ for what was then basically a 4-function calculator).

One of our EE profs was a member of the State Licensing Board (which was why so many people at our school annually took the exam as he would personally hand deliver applications to every engineering student scheduled to graduate each year) and he took it to the board in Lansing himself and came back with a ruling that basically said OK, as the consensus was that it wouldn't make any difference (after all, you could use your sliderule, and at the time the available handheld calculators couldn't really do much more than what a sliderule could do, with the possible exception of the precision of the answer, which for the 'EIT' was felt to generally be a non-issue anyway).

Of course, 5 years later when I took the second or 'Professional' exam, if you didn't have a calculator you were SOL.

And for the record, I scored 92 on the EIT and 96 on the PE exam, and I've had the good fortune to have had all of the fees, both the original examination fees and my semi-annual renewals, paid for by the various organizations for whom I've worked over the last 39 years.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Jefka]

In the afternoon test, they will give you a booklet with all the questions for all the afternoon tests and you bubble in on the answer sheet which exam you took (chem, mech, civil, etc). This is nice because you can spend a couple minutes looking at each section to assess which is easier.

That being the case, why not study for at least two sections? I studied for chemical, industrial and general just in case. It may be a little anal retentive, but there's nothing wrong with that on an exam that takes up half the day.

 

[HgTX]

John: When I took the FE exam in 1996 or so, they'd been offering subject-specific afternoon sections for several years.

I don't remember there being a big deal about the calculators when I took it, but now they have the same very restricted calculator list as for the PE exam.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[ShaggyPE]

I took the EIT (I don't think it was called FE then) in 2001 as a senior in a ME program. I was allowed to use a graphing calculator. I had to borrow a TI-89 because it had the same functionality as the TI92. The 92 had all the bells and whistles but it also had a qwerty keypad. The 89 did all the same stuff but relied on an alpha key to access the text characters. The calculator restrictions have become much more restrictive since then.

I chose the general afternoon after briefly looking at the mechanical portion. General appeared more basic.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Pretty good with SolidWorks

 

[Contrivers]

I took the FE in April 2009 5 years after I got my BSEE, I took the general section. Taking the general section to me made sense because you are already studying for the general morning section, now you are just going more in depth with the afternoon section. The morning section was pretty simple, the afternoon section was about 3 times as hard as the morning in my opinion.

Just be sure to put in a good solid 2 months of studying and you should be fine. I would also recommend taking as many practice tests as you can get your hands on and timing yourself like its the real deal, time management is the key. It is a good feeling to have an hour plus each section to go back and double check your answers vs bubbling in your guesses at light speed the last 5 minutes like half the room did.

I also recently passed the electrical Power PE and found that to be much easier than the FE, but of course I use the electrical stuff daily.