Of course, I don't have my results back but I feel pretty good about it. Good enough that I'm not going to be wrought with anxiety for the next 10 weeks while I wait for them to finally release my score, but not confident enough that I will be totally heartbroken if I did not pass. But overall I think my study strategy and test-taking strategies worked out well; if I didn't pass I'm sure it's because I didn't practice them more rigorously (I flaked out on studying a bit in the couple weeks prior), rather than my approach being fundamentally wrong.
Anyway, while the exam is still fresh in my mind, I'd like to offer some general thoughts to future exam candidates:
- Don't get too hung up on the sections in the Supplied Reference Manual. There are morning-session questions where the discipline-specific (especially electrical and civil) sections are useful. Likewise, if you take a discipline-specific afternoon exam, that doesn't mean all the info you need will be in your discipline's section. For example, I took the Civil exam but went back into some of the morning topics, the Environmental section, and even the Mechanical section.
- The index in the Supplied Reference Manual sucks. I'd guess it has about 10% of the subject matter referenced. It's worth a look but don't waste a lot of time digging through it.
- I wouldn't even risk bringing a cell phone with you. For all the other rules -- no hats, no water bottles on the table, etc. -- the monitors seemed willing to give you a reminder and ask you to comply. But they seemed pretty adamant that if a phone were seen or heard, you were out. I even took the battery out of my car alarm keychain because I'd rather have someone pull a hit-and-run on me than get bounced from the exam.
- You can take bathroom breaks during the exam. There's a "procedure", which they will explain. But there's no need to take a bunch of Immodium the night before or something. I just thought this was useful info since I hadn't seen it written anywhere and was a little curious about it affecting my performance.
- I had plenty of time to reason through more than half of the problems on both the morning and afternoon sessions -- probably closer to 75% if you count things I had to "re-learn" on the spot using the reference manual. Of course, if I'd studied more, maybe I would have been able to reason through more. But I like my odds.
- As I was taking it, I reasoned that if I was absolutely sure on at least 40 questions in the morning and 20 questions in the afternoon, I had a good chance of passing even if I had to guess on every remaining problem.
- It seemed like there were more "trivia" questions than I expected -- conceptual knowledge, rather than calculations -- especially on the Civil afternoon. They were seemingly too random to pick a few topics to suggest reviewing, but if you have any vocabulary flash cards left over from your classes it would be worth going through.
- The ethics session was awesome. I carefully read that portion of the Supplied Reference Manual as I laid in bed the night before the exam. I'm glad I did because most of them were just straight out of the book. There was only one that wasn't completely cut-and-dry. I am sure that section really buoyed my score.
- If you can't find a needed formula or a vocabulary definition in the book right away, move on. I was surprised how many questions -- even ones I had absolutely no idea about -- I ended up answering confidently just by stumbling upon what I needed by dumb luck while searching for something else.
Well, that's about all I've got. I'm sure I'll post some more video lessons coming up to the next FE session in the fall. And I'll let you know if I passed!
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