Hey Twisty Puzzlers,

Today I took the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) Exam, which is a licensing exam for entry-level engineers. In the mechanical engineering department here at CU Boulder, we're all required to take the exam in order to graduate. (We don't have to pass, we just have to take it. It's partly so that the school can get some statistics on how they're doing.)

It's one of the most brutal exams I've ever taken. It covers everything in engineering school. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING.
The morning exam is 120 questions in 4 hours, covering general engineering topics:
Mathematics (through Calc 3, Diff Eq, and Linear Algebra)
Probability and Statistics
Chemistry
Ethics and Business Practices
Computers (really easy stuff, like understanding simple programming)
Statics
Material Science
Fluid Mechanics
Electricity and Magnetism
Thermodynamics

And now that your brain is nicely fried, you take another 4-hour exam in the afternoon, this time 60 questions that are more specific to your own major (in my case Mechanical Engineering):
Mechanical Design and Analysis
Kinematics, Dynamics, and Vibrations
Materials and Processing
Measurements, Instrumentation, and Control
Thermodynamics and Energy Conversion processes
Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Machinery
Heat Transfer
Refrigeration and HVAC

If you're feeling woozy after reading those lists, just imagine how I feel after experiencing the real thing today. But I am pretty sure I passed! (I won't find out for 8 to 10 weeks. Even though it's on a Scantron, they do a lot of analysis of the results to figure out the cutoff for a pass.)

Have any of you older members of the forum taken the FE? Anyone taken the PE (Principals and Practice of Engineering)? I've heard it's supposed to be even scarier.

Boy am I glad to be done with that!

-Eitan

Wow! I can't wait to take this in a few years!!

Well done! It sounds like an all around knowledge review.

And I can understand what they mean that the goal is not to pass.
Providing students with some sort of "general exposure test" can
be very beneficial, as it allows them the choice of many future options.

I never had to do such a test, as I mainly focused on mathematics, and
despite being an undergraduate, I always chose postgraduate units!
The engineering part(s) came on a very later period of my life.




Pantazis

Well done Eitan! If I was doing that I probably would have pulled a sickie.

I forgot to mention the fact that it costs something like $150 to sign up for the exam. It makes the prospect of taking it twice even less welcoming.

-Eitan

You have to pay for the exam!!?? Well, it looks like if I did mechanical engineering, I would be unemployed for a VERY long time.

It depends. There are certain jobs that absolutely require it. For instance, you can't sign engineering drawings if you aren't licensed. But I want to go into product design, and I don't think it's required in the prototyping field.

-Eitan

I took the FE on the 8th also. I was surprised at how easy it was to be honest...I was mostly scared of the Engineering Economics questions as I had never taken a class on that...

I will take the FE exam this upcoming Fall and I'm dreading it, but we've taken a mock FE before and it wasn't too bad. The shear volume of questions scares me because that means I'll have to remember all the crap that I've learned these past few years.

I hope you did well! Engineering (Mechanical in particular) seems to be a very common career on this forum. I'm no exception.

Maybe a bit off topic, but have you had an internship at any companies yet?

I am working my behind off trying to get an internship for this summer. The past two summers I have worked in a more research oriented atmosphere, and I would really like to get a real internship in industry. But out of about 30 or 40 companies I have applied to for internships, I have heard from exactly 1 of them, and they haven't contacted me since the interview, which was about 3 weeks ago.

What follows is a shameless plug:
If you happen to know anyone looking for an enthusiastic mechanical design student to work for the summer, shoot me an email!

Check out my portfolio: https://sites.google.com/site/eitancherportfolio/

-Eitan

Amazing portfolio! It's so well organized and the content is just outstanding! It's definitely something to look forward to. High five for last graduating class before world ends! (although I'm graduating high school, not college) It'll be a challenge to be the new Eitan when you're graduated and I get into CU.

In relevance to the test... I kind of predicted a test like this even if no one ever told me about it. Lots of information, I see. It reminds me of something my AP Bio teacher told me. "The college board doesn't say 'study these concepts because they're on the AP test'. They just tell you 'AP Biology' and say 'go!'." This is basically the same concept, apparently, only on a lot more material than just one textbook. AP testing is this and next week, and I've got 3 of them. In combined time, I'll be taking a bit longer of AP testing than your engineering exam, but mine's on 3 different days. My first is tomorrow.

I passed! WOOHOO!!!!

This is a big load off my shoulders for next year. I'll be the only one in my Senior Design class and my Mechatronics class who isn't studying like mad next March!

-Eitan

Congratulations! But no time for celebrating, you've got puzzles to design!

Well done Eitan! Nothing less than what we expected from you.
Now let's see what would be your next puzzle... err... I mean... test!




Pantazis