r/FE_Exam

I was so anxious this morning and wasn’t sure if I was going to pass. A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders! On to bigger and better things.

Resources I used:

PPI course: I used this from late 2025 to early 2026 (4 months). I wouldn’t recommend it unless you feel you need to relearn the basics or have failed more than twice.

Mark Mattson: I rewatched his videos after my third fail (first this year) on subjects that I did poorly on for that attempt (Dynamics, Statics, Mechanics of Materials, Transportation)

PrepFE: This is a go to for anyone. I used PrepFE a lot starting about 2-3 weeks from my test. Here’s a referral link if anyone cares to use it: https://www.prepfe.com/?referral\_token=43d9a07c-1126-4a18-adfa-cc41b1c3a1cc

Civil Practice Exam (KTS): This group posted a $10 practice exam on this sub. It was on the basic side but it allowed me to feel confident on the basic aspects of each subject. I took this and reviewed every problem about 5 days from test date.

Civil Practice Exam (NCEES 2024): I wasn’t able to complete this exam. But I finished and reviewed as many as I could before test date (about half the exam)

Thanks again to everyone for any advice they’ve given in this sub. I will celebrate this result and soon look at steps to begin studying for my PE :)

Let me say this first: whether you are on your 2nd, 3rd, or even more attempts, don’t give up. Keep going.

I know it’s hard not to compare yourself to people who passed on their first try. I know it can affect your confidence and make you question yourself, but we are all on different timelines. Keep your head up and keep pushing forward.

After my 3rd attempt, I felt defeated. I honestly thought I would never pass, but it all worked out. All praises to the Most High God.

My journey:

First attempt:
I had just graduated and didn’t put in much effort. My peers said it was an easy exam, so I decided to just take my shot.

Second attempt:
I used Mark Mattson and Gregory Michaelson videos, along with the NCEES 100-Question Practice Exam.

Third attempt:
I used Direct Hub, which really helped me understand concepts and skills that I had been lacking.

Fourth attempt (the one that worked):
I focused more on practice questions instead of watching videos. I used PrepFE and completed two to three timed 20-question quizzes every evening. If I kept getting something wrong, I would pause and quickly review that topic.

I also found a Islam- 800 question practice exam that was being shared online. It helped expose me to different question styles, and I actually saw at least one very similar question on the real exam.

It’s completely normal to walk out of the exam feeling like you failed. That’s exactly how I felt. I ran out of time and had to blindly guess on about 8 questions. Between those and the other questions I wasn’t confident about, I was already preparing myself to take the exam for a 5th time.

But it worked out.

So if you didn’t pass this time, don’t lose hope. Keep studying, keep practicing, and trust the process. Your time is coming.

Passed first try!!
I did something a little unorthodox vs others in this sub- i focused exclusively on my strengths.

My advice is not to let free points go —
Alot of the math questions are freebees, econ is straightforward, and ethics you can search the handbook. That’s a solid ~15 points right there!

I completely guessed all stats questions that wasn’t just plug and chug, all mat sci, all heat transfer, all mechanical principles, all thermo- putting in B for all answers. The only questions i took a little time to break down were the fill-in-the-blanks

I completely focused on statics, dynamics, fluids, mech materials, spending up to 5-10 minutes per question

As long as i could get ~40 answers for sure right, statistically the last 20 could come from good guessing / strategized guessing

I for sure felt liked I failed. Watching MM and Prep FE actually works. Even a little bit of practice pushed me over the edge from my first attempt.

Mr. Stone is scared in the ICC and is running from the NBI. As seen in the image, he is climbing a flight of stairs to reach a safer floor. If Mr. Stone has a mass of 80 kg and he climbs a vertical height of 5 meters, how much Work does he do against gravity?

(Use g = 9.8 m/s²)

A. 400 J

B. 784 J

C. 3,920 J

D. 4,000 J

Does this little "passed" page feel anticlimactic to anyone else? I keep worrying it'll change behind my back 😂.

Also do you not get the score breakdown if you pass?

I’m studying for the FE exam and my practice test has that question in it. I don’t think that’s a solvable question. Am I incompetent or is the author?

Edit: I’ve since found multiple problems with incorrect answers in this book. Please, no one buy an FE Exam Prep book written by Claud Spencer.

I get that units need to match but why do you divide by gravity if the formula itself doesn't call for it?

Took the exam last week and got the result today. PASSED.

What helped me:

1. MM videos (Must watch all if you out of school for 2 years +)
2. PrepFE, I was consistently scoring 80%+ here on all subjects. (Do PrepFE only after watching all MM videos)
3. Full Practice exam from NCEES (got 69% when I did)
4. Interactive 50 Qs Practice exam (got 71% here)

I prepared for 2.5 months, 1 to 2 hours on weekdays and 3-4 hours on weekends.

Early PrepFE attempts score were average, it improved when I mastered the handbook ( I knew how to find what is needed quickly)

The exam itself wasn’t difficult. I found first half easier than second half. I spent 3 hours on the first half and was freaking out when I realized that I had only 2.5 hours for the second half (57 Qs). I did well overall, flagged about 15-20 questions. I reviewed the flagged questions later, guessed about 10-12.

Not surprised by my results as I was confident going in.

Despite serious self doubt, and leaving the test center with confidence that I failed... I have passed the Civil FE first try! I have so much to say but first I want to thank this community tremendously. I graduated a year ago and missed out on my university's FE prep course because of my dads passing during my final year. I had no clue where to begin with finding resources or even structuring my schedule. Don't want to make this sappy but yeah, very grateful to this community. Ok now the important stuff-

Some context: I work full time, graduated a year ago, and studied Architecture and Architectural Engineering. This means that I was missing prior knowledge on a good 1/3 of the topics because I never took those classes. I know a lot of people experience something similar and I am here to ease your mind.

I started studying 6 weeks before I took the exam and used PrepFE, the NCEES Practice exams (vol 1 and 2) and ISLAM 2 full length practice test book on amazon. I spent the first 2 weeks doing about 20-35 practice problems a day on prepFE and focused topic by topic. It was about 2 hours of studying a day. I took a lot of notes during this time. This helped me gauge which topics I had to seriously focus on and which ones I could be lax in.
This was.... humbling and nerve wrecking because why the heck was I even struggling with math. Obv, was scoring very low in transpo, environmental, surveying, water resources, and ESPECIALLY geotech. But! I was improving. I just kept doing practice problems. After the 2 week mark, I took half a timed practice test every weekend on sunday morning. Starting with NCEES Civil Vol 1.

Here's what I think really helped me. I spent the next three days (mon-wed) after each practice exam going over the entire 55 questions IN DEPTH. I'm talking notes, videos, random resources online, literally anything to help me understand every aspect of the question. You really have to focus on your fundamentals, and I found this to be the only way of doing so. I scored a 50% on the Vol 1. Then in vol 2 (the following week) I scored around a 70%. I was stoked, Amazing right? WRONG

The following week, I transitioned to using the ISLAM practice tests and scored a 43%. At this point I had 2 more weekends left and one of the weekends was the day before my exam... I started panicking. The ISLAM exams were WAYYYY harder than the NCEES ones and even the PrepFE questions (which I was scoring about 60% on). Anyways, I kept doing the same thing just reviewing and doing more and more practice questions. In the last week, I watched MM and kept going through the ISLAM questions. used prepFE when I felt like I needed to focus on a topic. The weekend before the exam, I took one last ISLAM 1/2 test and scored a 50%. At this point, I was sure I was gonna fail.

THE EXAM WAS HARDER THAN NCEES, PREPFE, AND ISLAM. I blindly guessed on a good 20-25 questions. I ran out of time in the second half and had to speed through the last 15 questions (which were mostly transpo) by putting in literally any answer. Couldn't even read some of those questions.

I think what made me pass was the curve BUT *reviewing* those practice exams helped me build by fundamentals a ton. I dont think I realized it at the time but it helped me navigate the handbook during the exam and take a lot more educated guesses. The math questions on the exam were harder than the ones I studied. ALLLL the fluid questions had me stumped. To be frank, there were very very few questions that were like something I had seen (of the ones that weren't just plug and chug). But I guess I did pretty good on the ones I intentionally answered. Ultimately, going over question explanations and relearning certain concepts was the best thing imo.

That is my biggest tip. There is so much content to study that memorizing certain question styles will really not help IN MY OPINION. You're better off understanding the concepts of each topic. I am not an advocate of AI whatsoever but you could possibly generate study guides to help you refine your knowledge on fundamentals. If you're gonna memorize anything, maybe it should be the Handbook honestly.

A lot of people on here said to do 1000 questions in order to pass. That may work for a certain group of people but tbh I probably did a total of 400-500 questions. Majority of my study time went into reviewing answers and explanations. Seeing different question styles (NCEES, PrepFE, MM, and ISLAM) helps a lot too. Looking back, NCEES exams were way too easy. Wording was similar to the real exam but generally I felt like they were worlds apart in terms of difficulty.

In terms of resources, ISLAM was the most helpful one in preparing me for the exam and Mark Mattson was the most helpful one in teaching me the concepts of the classes I never took.

Anyways, sorry for this insane ramble, but this is my very candid experience. Hopefully it helps someone out there. I truly believe we can all pass, its just a matter of studying with intention- which is basically what I am getting at with this entire-way too long- post.

P.S.
I want to talk a little about test anxiety. I suffer with this BADLYYY. The entire week before my exam was terrible in terms of nerves. Even after the exam I had 2 separate dreams that I failed. The night before my exam, I dreamt of my late father consoling me. This helped me a lot. I am so grateful he visited me because it almost completely took away all my worries (no longer cared if I would pass or fail). But in the future when stakes are higher and I take my PE, I want to know how to deal with this stress. Does anyone have any tips?

P.P.S
I am so excited to put "Not Interested" the next time Mark Mattson is recommended to me on youtube... nothing against him of course.

Just wanted to say I passed my FE! Already applied for the certification and will try and sit for the PE around November 2026.

I'm 3 years out of college and used school of PE with the ncess practice exams vol 1 and 2.

Don't give up!

Posting my fifth and sixth ( got a 15 on thermodynamics on the sixth time) attempts …. Staring to lose hope and im unsure what to do. Any tips?

This was a "trial run" at the exam considering that I did not study for it for one second. Being in both engineering school and flight school my time was virtually eaten up for the months leading in, and I knew I was guaranteed to fail because of this. Took it anyway as part of my project manager's recommendation to. I took the exam and felt good about it, and left with an hour to spare after checking everything. I got my results this morning and somehow I passed on my first try! I know my case is applicable to no one and that this probably isn't very useful to many people but I'm still going to celebrate that I passed. Cheers?

Edit, I suppose I can provide a little bit of advice. I can't speak to any studying strategy because obviously I didn't do that, but I can speak to test taking strategy.

I did three things on this exam that I think helped my chances; one was that I didn't stress. Unless you're planning on being short on cash for a while or your job is absolutely dependent on passing this time, this is the most inconsequential exam you'll ever take. It's not worth stressing over. Take control of it.

Second is that if you're reading a problem and don't immediately know how to do it, flag it and come back later. Work through the problems you do know and dedicate your time to that since those are where you have the highest chance of getting it correct. Then use what remains to work on the other problems. The solution might also come to you when you get all of the other content out of the way and have some space to think.

The third is, obviously, know how to use the reference material, and read the questions carefully to understand exactly what it's asking for. The handbook is a powerful tool (as is any reference material of such breadth on any test) that has everything you need. When you know what the question wants you can think of good keywords to search that can help you find exactly what you need.

I hope that these tips help someone else with their exam