Welcome to FE Mechanical Exam Prep Course
Thanks for joining. I hope you are excited to get started on your study journey toward becoming an Engineer in Training!
A few administrative items to cover before you dive into the program:
Logging In
The course is hosted on Thinkific. If you ever get lost, just go to https://mechanicalpeexamprep.thinkific.com. You will need to log in with the same username and password credentials you created when you signed up (so don’t forget them!) and then you pick right up where you left off. You will find Thinkific is intuitive to navigate, but if you have any questions along the way, let me know.
What Is Included
This course contains 300 exam-like multiple choice questions split into three full exams with 100 questions each. For each question, there is a detailed solution video of typically 3-5 minutes in duration. Below each solution video, you will find a convenient link to the written explanation, which includes the key search terms (highlighted in red text) that may be used to find important formulas or tables in the FE Reference Handbook, which is the only resource you will have access to during the FE exam.
You will not find standalone lectures intended for passive consumption. This is intentional. This program is meant to be an active, hands-on study process where you will recall, and where necessary re-learn, key concepts from your college curriculum while solving actual problems. Unlike the PE Exam, the FE exam focuses on breadth more than depth. For this reason, your goal should be to familiarize yourself with a wide variety of concepts in mechanical engineering, and be willing to use a combination of recall, lookups, and critical thinking to navigate the problems you encounter.
How the Problems Are Organized
Original exam-like problems have been crafted and curated in alignment with the Mechanical FE Exam Specification and CBT format. Within each Full Practice Exam, the problems are batched by topic and the batches are sequenced by importance. For example, the exam spec places math first, but most of the math on the FE exam is best learned while solving other engineering problems. Therefore, the number of pure algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and calculus problems is reduced and placed later in the exams. Key subjects like Thermodynamics and Fluids are explored more thoroughly and placed earlier in the exams.
A rough prioritization for the Mechanical FE Exam based on the exam spec, which is reflected in each of the three full practice exams, is as follows: Thermodynamics, Fluids, Dynamics/Kinematics/Vibrations, Mechanical Design, Statics, Mechanics of Materials, Heat Transfer, Material Properties, Math, Electricity & Magnetism, Controls, Probability & Statistics, Economics. This study order reinforces the importance of the topics that NCEES considers most significant.
How You Should Use These Problems
Active, independent learning is the most efficient path to passing the FE Exam. That’s why there is no passive lectures to watch, and no need to waste time filtering through the problems and deciding what to focus on and what to skip over. The filtering has been done for you, all you have to do is start working the problems in order.
Under no circumstances should you read the problem and immediately start watching the solution video or reading the written solution. It is critical that you try the problem first on your own, even if it seems frustrating or you don’t know where to start. After you strive with it for awhile, if you’re completely stuck, you can start the video or glance at the written solution for some hints or key search terms that might help. Once you have some new ideas, return to the problem and keep striving to make progress on your own! Repeat the process continuously, using the solutions as sparingly as possible.
As a general rule of thumb, you should be willing to struggle with a problem for at least 15 minutes and potentially as much as a half hour with no external input. However, you should not spend 45-60 minutes working on a problem without taking advantage of the solutions provided. The point is to emphasize critical thinking and create the optimal conditions for learning in a manner that is as memorable as possible. The goal is not to waste time or make studying unenjoyable. It is my hope that you will come to view each problem you encounter as a “worthy and fun challenge.”
In terms of difficulty, the problems in this program are intended to approximate the difficulty of a typical exam problem, with a handful of exceptions which are included in order to stretch you a bit. I want your exam day to feel easy and have very few surprises if any. I would invite you to lean into the challenge.
How Long You Should Study
The overall duration of your study process will depend on the amount of time you have available to study on a typical day and the quality and recency of your educational background. For example, if you are a recent graduate with a solid engineering foundation, good stamina for enduring long study sessions, and the ability to carve out 2-3 hours per day and solve 8-10 problems in a sitting, you could complete everything in as little as 30-50 hours, perhaps over the course of a single month. On the other hand, if you’ve been out of school for a long time and have significant demands on your time from work and family responsibilities, you may have to make the most of fragments of time, working 2-3 problems during a 45 minute session on a typical day, and taking 80-100 hours spread over 3-4 months.
There are advantages to giving yourself 3-4 months to go through all the problems in this program. I know that may sound like a long time, but the reality is that we learn better when we step away from the material long enough to integrate it, and the grooves in our minds are dug deeper the next time we see that topic. By immersing yourself for 3-4 months, you will put these concepts and skills into long-term memory, and the information will be with you for decades to come, rather than forgotten a year after you become an EIT. And this strong foundation comes in handy if you choose to pursue professional licensure in the future. With the CBT exam being offered with flexible scheduling, I suggest setting (and if necessary changing) your test date to allow for sufficient time. Remember life will get in the way as well, so it’s good to have some margin. Factor of safety!
How To Ask Questions
Most candidates find the video solutions and written solutions to be quite thorough. While I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to respond to 100% of the technical questions that are submitted, I will make my best effort to share some insights where possible, especially for questions that come up frequently.
I want this program to be the most useful and reliable FE prep course available. If you believe you have found an error, no matter how minor, I would greatly appreciate if you would let me know.
To ask a question or report an error please use this form.
Lastly, if you have a general administrative question that is non-technical and unrelated to studying with the course content, or you would like to make a referral, or inquire about tutoring, feel free to email me directly at [email protected].
I am grateful and honored you have entrusted me with this important stepping stone in your career. I’m so excited to deliver this material to you and see you succeed! I would be delighted to get email updates from you as you progress.
Happy Studying!
-Dan Molloy
