I’ve been in the engineering profession for about 35 years, and finally decided to take the PE Mechanical: HVAC and Refrigeration Exam. I passed on my first attempt.
Initially, I reviewed many prep courses, and also considered just studying on my own for the exam. After reviewing all the options, I chose to go with the Mechanical PE Exam Prep - Full Access course. This course is written and kept updated by Dan Molloy, a PE, and who happens to be a very good instructor.
This course is set up to provide video instruction review of fundamentals as well as many PE Exam style questions and solutions. The solutions are provided with dedicated videos, and a physical soft backed workbook which contains all the problems with full solutions. The course is broken down into sections such as Thermodynamics, Fluid Dynamics, Heat Transfer, Psychometrics, HVAC, and general topics such as Engineering Econ, HDD energy problems… etc. These questions are definitely challenging and will prepare you for the exam.
Every two weeks, Dan holds a one hour zoom / teams type “Office Hours” session. Prior to the meeting, students are encouraged to submit questions that have come up during their studies such as general questions, or specific questions for individual work problems. There is also an archive of past office hours sessions as well as a searchable index to find all the instances that questions have come up for any specific problem. It’s helpful to see how other people have the same hang-ups on a specific problem. I also sent Dan many emails during my study time and he would respond quickly to my questions.
Some of the advantages of using Mechanical PE Exam Prep include:
Structured course with many questions and solutions. All information is both on-line, but also found in a bound course book which was sent to me.
Questions are generally more difficult than found on the PE Exam - which prepares you very well. The questions are challenging and definitely show where your weaknesses are - even if you didn’t think you had them in a particular area.
Two full-length 80 question practice exams. I also purchased the NCEES practice exam, but found the exams written by Dan to be better than the NCEES practice exam.
Office Hours live sessions, and quick response email responses.
Dan has many additional YouTube videos. You can preview these and see the teaching style, which I found to be super helpful.
It should also be noted that prior to purchasing this course, I purchased the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual (MERM), and its associated work book. I found the reference book to be good, but the workbook seemed to be outdated and not matching the new computer based PE Exam format, which was definitely not helpful.
I highly recommend this course. Although I am in this related industry, I do not believe I would have passed the Exam the first time without the dedicated and detailed guidance I received from the problem types and all of the resources connected to this course.
Response from the owner:Congrats on your PE!