FE Review Manual, 3rd Edition

Customer Reviews (View All - 3)

Both useful things, but they serve different purposes Review by Amazon.com Customer

Overall

This is less a 'study guide' and more of a 'book of practice problems'. Both useful things, but they serve different purposes.

This book does talk about some strategies for taking the FE in the very beginning, but more along the lines of why questions are asked certain way, and less about test taking strategies. Instead, the bulk of it is practice problems from past FE exams, both for diagnostic test sections and for learning how to solve the problem with step-by-step solutions. The step-by-step parts are usually pretty clear, but they do rely on the reader knowing/remembering some mid-level theorems - these could be improved by reducing the solutions down further. But this is still the best FE prep book on the market right now.

Now, I did pass the FE and I used this book to study, but I used strategies that I found elsewhere. I'll lay them out here:
1. There is no 'passing' score for the FE. Instead, they take all the scores from the same test on that day, scale them using the unmarked 'bench marking' problems, and place the scores on the standard distribution. The bottom 25% do not pass, the top 75% do. the scaling doesn't drastically change the scores, so the FE is designed to essentially pass those who are able do better than straight guessing on a 4-part multiple choice test. This means ANSWER EVERY PROBLEM, even if it is a completely wild guess. Then use your own skills as an engineer to narrow it down to 2 choices that make sense, or actually solve it if you can in the 3-minute pacing that the FE requires.

2. If you see units, it is a unit conversion problem. Plain and simple. You don't need to remember your physics, dynamics, statics, fluids, or thermo course material and do those problems in a fraction of the pacing you got for your undergrad tests. You just need to convert the units correctly 9/10.

3. Learn to search the FE Handbook PDF by problem keyword. This is where these practice problems come particularly in handy. Don't practice the problems to memorize how to solve them. Practice spotting the keyword you need to search in the Handbook PDF they provide on the test. That way you can simply look up the information you need right off the bat and see how to do the problem. You'll still need a basic competency in solving that particular type of engineering problem - the FE handbook doesn't walk you through the formulas application step-by-step - but you don't need to memorize the formulas.

That is it for strategy, really. (Posted on 4/7/2017)