Very quick question about US PE exams

[Ussuri]

As I understand the US licensing system your must pass a state exam to call yourself an Engineer (I wish the term Engineer was as protected in the UK, but thats another discussion), and that each of the states has their own board. You need a license to work in each state.

I notice from some of the member profiles that many of the learned contributors are licensed in 20-30 states.

If my knowledge of US geography holds up, there are 50 states. Does that mean that you have to take an 8 hour exam for each state? If I wanted to work anywhere in the US I would need to sit 400 hours of exams? Thats a lot!

 

[Ussuri]

I see the pass rates for PE Civil are a good bit lower than for the ICE, I think the ICE CPR pass rate is around 70% but the PE Structural are a good bit higher, I think IStructE is around 35%.

The IStructE exam is a similar format to the US ones, 7 hours, design a building from scratch including two scheme designs and one detailed, provide all calcs for main members, framing etc, draw all details and write all specs. The ICE review does not have any technical calculations in it. They assume that this has all been assessed during the training agreement period and does not need to be covered again at review stage. I sometimes wonder though if it might be useful to include some technical calculations...

 

[prost]

Missouri's board of registration sends out a semi-annual newsletter that talks about new registration requirements, disciplinary actions, and pass/fail rates for the two most recent PE and "Engineering Intern" (which I take to mean EIT or FE exam takers) exams. They did not break it out by engineering specialty.
PE--356 candidates, 208 passed, 147 failed, 1 invalid.
EIT--857 candidates, 570 passed, 287 failed, 2 irregularities.

PE--58% pass, EIT--67% pass

 

[henri2]

Ussuri, in California where I reside, the PE Civil exam consists of the national exam, a 4-hr seismic exam, a 4-hr surveying exam, and an easy take home exam dealing state laws and regulations. For some reason, the pass rate for the national exam are now much lower than the national average; this coupled with the seismic and surveing exams, probably means that pass rate for the California PE will probably be 1/2 the national pass rate. Check the October 2005 results

http://www.dca.ca.gov/pels/e_oct05stats.htm

For the structural exam, candidates in California have to pass parts 1 and 2 of the national exam and then pass the CA specific SE exam. I understand that less than 1 in 4 pass both parts on the first attempt. October 05 results are shown at the bottom of the page in link provided above.