PE Study Group

[Waterclown]

New to the forum so let me apologize if this topic has been posted before. I have been reading over some of the PE threads and the ones I found interesting/helpful were a little older and I was not able to reply to them - because I guess they were closed.

I am interested in pursuing a PE in metallurgy/materials. I live in Pennsylvania, but I may pursue the license in Delaware. That decision to be made later.

During my reading I see that study groups are recommended. I don't know that I like to work in groups, but the purpose of this post is to solicit the wisdom of the group from this forum to get people's opinion on whether or not they participated in a study group and maybe found it useful while preparing for the PE. I have a BS in materials but I graduated in the year of our Lord 2006 and I have to get used to studying again. I'm confident that there are things I won't know and will need help with. For example, I have happily forgotten most of my polymers and will need to re-learn most of that.

Thanks.

 

[EdStainless]

There are also a lot of good study guides available these days.
Different than from back in the dark ages when I did mine.

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P.E. Metallurgy

 

[weldstan]

You may find it difficult to find members for a study group. When I took my exam in Texas, only one other engineer was taking the Metallurgy exam.

 

[Maui]

There are roughly 50 people in the United States who take the metallurgy PE exam in any given year, or about one person per state on average. So finding a study group may be difficult to do. I took the exam back in 2004 when I was 40, and passed on the first try. I read a little bit from some metallurgy reference books that I had never used before that I checked out of my college library, but soon realized the futility of studying since no review manuals were available for the metallurgy PE exam. Other than this I did not study. Either I knew my discipline by then or I didn’t. I think that you will be well served by walking into the exam with a good test taking strategy that maximizes your chances of earning a passing grade. Figure out how much time, on average, you will have to answer each question. Do the questions you are confident that you will be able to answer quickly first. For the other questions cross off the multiple choice answers that you can safely eliminate, and reason out what the correct answer is from the remaining choices. And where you can’t reason out the correct answer, guess! A certain percentage of these you are likely to guess correctly. This is the strategy I used, and it worked. And I will never have to take this exam again. For all of the other states that I have been licensed in (earlier this year I was licensed in Michigan) I was awarded the PE license through reciprocity with New York.

 

[mrfailure]

I initially got involved with Eng Tips because someone else was also taking their PE at the same time, so we were able to send ideas back and forth (both of us passed). A couple of thoughts: I also got my PE in Delaware, which grandfathered in my experience so I not have to take the FE (college was too long ago for that more general exam to be practical). I have since found that there are some states that will not give reciprocity because they require the FE. My other comment is the Metallurgy/Materials exam is difficult because it covers the entire field of materials engineering, instead of a subset like some of the other disciplines do. As working engineers, we usually work in a segment of engineering; most materials engineers seeking a PE really are in the failure analysis side of things or work in consulting. Remembering course work you never really worked in such as transport or thermodynamics is what makes this discipline particularly tough. I may be in the minority on this, but I believe a rethink of the purpose of the PE test is in order and the folks developing it should be more on the practical side and much less on the theoretical side.