Fundamentals of Engineering/EIT Exam Strategy

I wrote some general tips for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam in a previous post (link). Here are test taking strategies to go along with those.

FE Exam: Multiple Choice

Overall strategy: Become an expert in the subject areas that you are most familiar with and know the basics of all other subjects. There is a reason the engineering profession is split into specialties (civil, mechanical, etc); there is so much to know that it is almost impossible to be an expert in everything. Furthermore, we all have our own ways to solve problems. Those thought processes might work especially well on certain subjects and not so well on other subjects. I found that it is much more productive to focus on the subjects that I have a background in rather than try to learn an unfamiliar subject from scratch.

Guessing: The entire test is multiple choice with four possible answers. This means that if you completely guess, theoretically you have a 25% chance to get the correct answer. Further, if you are able to eliminate one of the possible answers, you now have a 33.3% chance to pick the right answer. Eliminating two possible answers leaves you with a 50% chance and, according to my study manual, a passing score on the FE Exam is a bit less than 50%. So, theoretically, if you were able to eliminate two possible answers for every question on the test, you should pass. Of course, this is not practical. In reality, there are some questions where you absolutely know the answer and some questions where you have no idea, but this does highlight the effectiveness of strategic guessing.

Subject areas: In the front of the NCEES handbook, there is a breakdown showing what percentage of the test is related to each subject area for the morning and afternoon session. I reproduced the breakdown for the morning session below:

Mathematics: 15% (equivalent of 18 questions)
Engineering Probability and Statistics: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Chemistry: 9% (equivalent of 10.8 questions)
Computers: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Ethics and Business Practice: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Engineering Economics: 8% (equivalent of 9.6 questions)
Engineering Mechanics (Statics and Dynamics): 10% (equivalent of 12 questions)

Strength of Materials: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Material Properties: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Fluid Mechanics: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)
Electricity and Magnetism: 9% (equivalent of 10.8 questions)
Thermodynamics: 7% (equivalent of 8.4 questions)

I suggest you approach this is to separate the subjects into two categories: subjects that you are comfortable with ("good subjects") and the subjects you are not comfortable with ("bad subjects"). Personally, I felt comfortable with Math, Computers, Ethics, Economics, and Electricity. Now, set a goal that you will get a score of 75% on the "good subjects" and 33% on the "bad subjects." Note that 75% is pretty high goal - this means that you get three out of every four questions correct. I chose 33% for the "bad subjects" because it corresponds to the probability of guessing when you have eliminated one possible answer. This come from the idea that you should be familiar enough with your "bad subjects" to have a general idea if one answer is out of whack. If you want to get really nerdy, you can create a table to see what you would score if you followed achieved this goal. The one I made is below:

Subject	Percentage of Test Content	My Score (Out of 100)	My Weighted Score
Mathematics	0.15	75	11.25
Probability & Stats	0.07	33	2.31
Chemistry	0.09	33	2.97
Computers	0.07	75	5.25
Ethics	0.07	75	5.25
Economics	0.08	75	6
Statics & Dynamics	0.10	33	3.3
Strength of Materials	0.07	33	2.31
Material Properties	0.07	33	2.31
Fluid Mechanics	0.07	33	2.31
Electricity & Magnetism	0.09	75	6.75
Thermodynamics	0.07	33	2.31
		TOTAL SCORE (%)	52.32

If I exactly followed my projections on the test, I would score over 50% for the morning section. In reality, I am slightly more confident in certain “bad subjects” and slightly less confident in some “good subjects” but this at least gives me a baseline goal to achieve for a passing score.

Time per question: For the morning session, you have 4 hours to complete 120 questions. This works out to 2 minutes per question. For the afternoon session, you have 4 hours to complete 60 questions. This works out to 4 minutes per question. In general, I would say that time is not an issue on the afternoon portion. Many people finish early and leave. The morning session, on the other hand, is a race against the clock. I believe my overall strategy can be applied here. As I said, it is pretty much impossible to be an expert in every single subject on the test. Thus, there will be questions where you completely guess. Taking into account the time to read the question and fill in the answer sheet, a guess should take about 20 seconds. Suppose you guess on 20 questions throughout the morning portion; this frees up 33 minutes and 20 seconds to be distributed among other questions. If that is distributed evenly, it results in an extra 20 seconds per non-guessing question. That extra time can be applied to questions where you know you are on the right track but need more time to make sure you have the right answer.

Morning/Afternoon session weight: Both the morning and afternoon portions are weighted equally, so 1 correct afternoon question is "worth" 2 correct morning questions. Basically this means you should not neglect studying for the afternoon session because it is your major/specialty and you feel confident in that material. The afternoon questions are difficult so you need to study for those too. Since there are fewer questions, the stakes are higher to solve each one.

Good luck on the exam!