Anyone ever taken the PE exam?

[steph78]

Has anyone on here ever taken the PE licensing exam ("Professional Engineer")?

I just realized I am eligible to take the exam this fall. I haven't taken an exam in years - hope I still remember how! Just now the thought of an 8-hour exam is a little overwhelming. :( I feel like I need to start studying now in order to be anywhere near prepared enough. How do you study everything you've learned in the past five years plus all the stuff from college that you have already forgotten? Review courses are way expensive (like $600). There's all this pressure in my company - it's a pretty small company and no one has EVER failed the test - everyone here has passed on their first try.

[Deadend]

Hey!

It'll be another 3 years before I can get "penged", but oh it will be fun......NOT!

What kind of engineering exam will it be? Chemical engineering for me.

[MollyMe]

I've taken the FE exam. I didn't study and I got in the mid-80's. I had to take it to graduate. It wasn't fun.

[steph78]

Civil Engineering. My worry is that that's so broad - I mean, do I have to go back and remember all that stuff about transportation engineering and environmental even though all my work deals with structures?

[steph78]

I've taken the FE exam. I didn't study and I got in the mid-80's. I had to take it to graduate. It wasn't fun.

Oh, the FE exam...good times! I almost missed that exam because I slept through my alarm...but my friend noticed that I wasn't there when it was getting close to time and called me on her cell phone and woke me up - I got there just in the nick of time but I was still filling in all the name, SSN, etc. info when everyone else had already started the actual exam. I didn't calm down until like two hours into it but passed just fine.

What engineering did you major in?

[MollyMe]

Industrial. The IE part (second half) of the test was really easy. Anyone can do IE. It's so easy.
I didn't take fluid dynamics and some other material on the first half of the test so that part really sucked. I just guessed.
Is the PE based only on your engineering concetration or is it for all engineering? I am clueless when it comes to thermo and rigid body now.

[steph78]

They have separate tests for each concentration (chemical, civil, electrical, etc.) My problem is that there is a civil exam which covers ALL the sub-categories like structures, environmental, transportation, etc., most of which I haven't even thought about in over five years...but I have learned the stuff at one point in time. There's also one that is specifically structures, and I think this one is REALLY hard from the list of topics the website had - it's way in-depth stuff that I don't necessarily have a lot of experience with yet. I am going to ask the higher-ups at my company which one everyone takes sometime next week...either way it looks like I have a lot to study for.

[labrat2111]

I haven't taken the PE or really even thought about it since being in school 4 years ago. However I'd be scared to take it now. I majored in chemical engineering and I wasn't the greatest at calculations then and these 4 years haven't helped :googly:

[snowgirl77]

Are you a structural engineer? Me too. It sounds like you're in the same boat as me - I should take the exam in October, but I really don't feel like ruining my summer with the crazy amount of studying that it will take for me to pass. I bought a few review books, but they really don't help. I think I might bite the bullet and just pay for a review course. Otherwise, I don't know if studying myself will work - I'll probably blow it off. Do you find that in your job, you are getting enough experience to do the structural part ok?

[steph78]

Wow - another female structural engineer! Not often that I run into one of those - in grad school there were usually only about three of us in any given class together. Okay, now I have someone to complain about work to who will actually understand! :)

I feel semi-okay about the structural portion of the exam. Obviously a lot of studying is in order, but we do such a variety of different projects here that I've gotten a lot of experience with wood and masonry design in addition to steel and concrete. I've only done like two PT jobs but I feel like I got the general idea because I got to go on six site visits for one of them so I really got to see the whole thing come together. The thing I am worried about is that I usually keep in really close contact with my project managers throughout a job and get lots of feedback on whether or not I am on the right track with everything - I am going to have to force myself to think things through from start to finish all by myself for this exam! But what about transportation and groundwater stuff...I keep having all these horrible flashbacks to the surveying questions on the EIT exam which I knew nothing about and was totally guessing.

How big of a company do you work for? I know a lot of people who work for larger companies complain about getting pigeonholed - they end up designing the same type of thing over and over so they are really efficient at one thing and have minimal experience with everything else. My small company (~15 people including drafters and admin.) throws a new thing at me every week it seems so I get barely any repetition - I'm always having to figure out something new, which often makes me feel slow and stupid but I guess it's good for me!

[snowgirl77]

Yes, we female engineers are few and far between. Girl power! It sounds like you are in a similar situation to me - although my company is 5 instead of 15. I end up working very closely with the principal, so a lot of times I don't do the entire design myself. Sometimes, when we are trying to meet a deadline, he ends up sort of taking over too, so that the project will be done faster. It really sucks for my professional devlopment, because we are always too busy to go over some of the things I am weaker on. How does Georgia do the exam? In Ct, we have a multiple choice questions portion, and then I think 12 structural problems. Do you have to submit calculations? I think I'm going to try a review course over the summer, and then see how I feel about it. I might just chicken out and try to take it in April next year.