i'm planning on entering the FE exam next October. i graduated 2 years ago and so i think i'll need lots to pass the exam, so what do you think is the best books to study from?!!
I liked this site because it is free, the questions were more difficult than the ones on the test, it has a chemical section to study for the afternoon, and it can generate practice exams and keep track of your results.
I tried the Lindeburg book, and found it to be too in depth compared to the test.
I only had two months to study, so my strategy was to cover everything I already knew, and not bother trying to learn new stuff.
If you do get a book, make it the book they give you during the test. Almost everything you need to know is in there, so you need to make sure that you are comfortable using it.
I took the FE a year and a half ago while I was still in school, (and I realize being out longer presents more challenges)
but the thing that helped me more than anything was to sit down and really read through the formula book that they are going to give you when you show up. You can find it online. I printed it out and went through all the sections and tried to learn as much as I could about any formulas/charts I didn't know. I was told before hand that everything you need is in that book somewhere you just don't have time to find it. I found that to be pretty true and I think knowing where formulas were was extremely helpful.
I took the FE exam 18 years after receiving my BS degree in Physics and Math. I studied from the Lindeburg review manual, and passed easily. I highly recommend this book. It also has some excellent pointers about how to prepare for the exam the day before, and can serve as a good reference book afterwards.
I also recommend the Lindeberg book. Also review (buy or download from NCEES website) the reference manual that is supplied during the exam, this will allow you to quickly find formulas you need.
On another note, I later purchased the Kaplan study guide for ChemE PE. Big mistake, being the third edition i was surprised to find a typo on nearly every page. this was especially troublesome when they occurred in examples. Good luck on the exam.
Nice, hey I'm in the same boat as you . . . been out for 2 years and in retrospect I should have taken the FE while in school. I actually started a thread about it in another section because I didn't realize there was an "Improving Myself to Get Ahead . . ." section. The moderators deleted my thread, so I went looking for it and found this one.
I thought the Kaplan study guides might be useful, but blarge seems to think otherwise. I'll look into the Lindeberg book.
Oh, and on using the search function - searching 'fe exam' in all areas of eng-tips.com returned no results . . . and I think I know how to use a search function (although I have been wrong before).
I would say that if what you do know, you know very well.... then you'll be fine. I would get the Lindeburg book. I took the FE in my senior year, but I was in a structural design program - which means that I didn't have any electrical classes, no traffic courses, no thermo classes, etc. All I really had was maths, physics, statics, dynamics, strength of materials, soils, and lots of structural courses, etc.
I had a couple blocks of answers that were all "C" when I got to the thermo and electrical questions. The afternoon civil portion only had (3) structural questions, so that didn't help much. There are many questions, however, that will be of the plug-n-chug type..... meaning all you have to do is find the equation in the manual and they give you all the variables, there are also things that apply accross disciplines (e.g. I used the principles of fluid mechanics to answer a traffic flow question). What I believe made the difference for me (because I lacked many of the classes that the test is predicated on) was that I knew really well what I did learn (maths, physics, strength of materials, etc.) and I feel like I got virtually every one of those questions right.