PPI FE Civil Review – A Comprehensive FE Civil Review Manual First Edition

Studying:This Review Manual was worth every penny. It follows with the NCEES reference manual really well and gave me everything I needed to be successful on the test. I am a current civil engineering major in my senior year. I bought this book a while back but was a little intimidated and so didn't even open it until a couple of months ago.Here is a not-so-well-known fact about the FE exam....you don't need to know everything. I printed off the list of topics and questions from the NCEES website and started with the Transportation and Geotechnical and then worked my way down to the lower priority questions. As a current student, I went from example to example in the book and tried to solve them. If I couldn't, I would try to learn it. If I couldn't learn it in 30 minutes, I moved on.Yes, some of the examples were longer than FE questions, but they were still helpful to me. In some sections, the RM gave an example for just about every equation in the NCEES reference manual and that was incredibly helpful. The act of working through the problems and identifying which equations needed unit conversions and which ones didn't was very useful, too. I did not study every section of the manual. I knew some topics like Mechanics of Materials it wouldn't matter how much I studied I would still do poorly.I spent a week going over the material I knew I could learn and then took off one day before the test.Test day:I spent my time on the questions I knew how to solve and made sure I was getting them right. Some of the questions were very similar to those in the RM (hint hint). This only makes sense because there are only so many problems you can ask with the equations in the reference manual. The ones I had no idea, I just guessed and moved on. I probably skipped and guessed about 25 questions (gasp!) and was unsure on about 10 more. But, 10 days later I got the result that I passed.You don't have to know it all. A 50% or 60% can get you a pass. If you're currently in school and have been paying attention at all to your classes, you don't need to study for an rediculous period of time either. Don't be intimidated. Learn the heavily weighted topics and then go for it: Get that EIT.Good luck!

First of, this book is a must have in preparing for the FE exam. What I liked about this reference is that it will highlight formulas that are in the FE reference manual (only electronic handbook allowed in taking the exam). What I liked is the problems solved showed where the formulas came from. I know people anticipate to see these type of problems in the FE, but don't do that approach. I just focused on how the formulas were used from the FE handbook and were applied to the problems (in other words, don't memorize the problems, that's were people make the mistake). My advice for FE takers, practice the problems using old NCEEs practice exams, purchase additional material, but the most important thing, get very familiar with the FE handbook on how formulas are applied and some cases, manipulate the formulas. I took the Civil FE exam in 2017 and passed, I also took an in-person FE review course at a local school.

Must have as a reference

Background:I graduated and received both my B.S. and M.S. degrees in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego and unlike most of my classmates decided to defer taking this exam as long as I could. Why you may ask? Mainly because I never foresaw myself of taking up any interest in getting licensed since my interests coincided more with software development in my field more than actual design and consulting. Though this last point is still true, my current job encourages all it's employees to eventually get their PE license somewhere down the line so there I was having to pick myself up from the bootstrap a couple years after finishing up my coursework having to go back and re-learning basic and key concepts for the FE Exam.Everyone that took this exam have consistently told me that this exam isn't hard and as long as you're familiar with the reference handbook and key concepts, you'll be solid. Considering that you need only at least around a 50% to pass this exam and after finally taking it myself, I couldn't agree more with them. The new and updated Computer Based Testing (CBT) format of the FE Exam makes it more convenient, in my opinion, since you really only need to focus on the specific topic you studied in college instead of trying to cram all those other subjects like Chemistry or E&M, etc. for an exam that you'll soon forget after. In addition, having an electronic and completely searchable reference handbook during the exam is a major benefit for you in terms of saving time during actual D-day.Review:With all the preliminaries out of the way, this review manual does a good enough job in helping someone like me or even a fresh graduate brush up the key concepts on what to really focus on to be ready for the exam. Each chapter has a diagnostic exam which helps you assess on what areas you're strong in and what you really should pin-point on honing in more. This will help you save a good amount of time in studying and possibly a good amount of hours just from avoiding to read things you already have on the back of your hand.The review manual itself is a very thick book which consists of a ton of information, reading, and equations. I think they did an awesome job in finally updating the review manuals in color coding the equations with blue boxes which help you in studying, especially if all you care about are equations. In terms of trying to read every single word of the book... DON'T!!! Not even if you haven't touched most of these subjects in years! Here are a few reasons why: 1) You will most likely end up falling asleep during mid-read due to the plethora of information and background being thrown at you 2) This manual is strictly meant to be a manual and not as a textbook! You will not be able to learn EVERYTHING about a subject like you would in one of your college textbooks 3) Reading all the theory and examples are one thing, but in order to really get familiar and be ready for the exam, you need to be doing practice problems... and A LOT of them.Unfortunately, this book is very limited to the amount of problems you can use to practice for the exam and the 20 or so questions given for each chapter hardly is enough to cover every subject in each section. Because of this, you'll have to cough up more money and purchase the supplementary Practice Problems book which has nothing but problems galore for you to tackle as well as solutions. Fair warning, a few of the problems Lindeburg writes up doesn't use equations supplied in the reference manual and rely on things you would have only learned in school. During my experience with the exam, all the equations I needed for the exam we're in the handbook and didn't have to remember much from my college days. Lindeburg also seems to throw problems at you that are a tad bit more difficult than that you'll actually come across during your judgement day. This is not a bad thing at all, the more of them that you'll do, the easier you'll find the actual FE Exam.It took me about 4-6 months of somewhat serious study time before my exam. After I actually took the exam, I realized I could have passed the exam and felt just as confident about most of the questions with just a couple months of studying prior to test day. Of course, everyone is different in their study habits and test prep methods. But overall, my suggestion is, don't stress too much about this exam, especially if you already have at least a B.S. degree in the field.