Customer Reviews

FE Review Manual: Rapid Preparation for the General Fundamentals of Engineering Exam (F E Review Manual), 2nd ed.

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this book rater late around mid-September 2006 and I was supposed to take the October 2006 exam. I was rather doubtful about passing the exam. I studied from this book and this book alone for 1.5 months. Studied everyday regularly for about 2-3 hours. Then I took the exam. Even though I am a Civil-Environmental Engineer, I took the General EIT. I got my results in the 1st week of Jaunary and I am thrilled to report that I have passed the EIT. I can be confident enough to say that even if you guys study this book....say everyday for 2-3 hours regularly, it is sufficient to pass the EIT based on a 1 to 1.5 month study duration. So, its never too late. The level of problems in this book is tougher that those you will encounter in the actual EIT. Hence, you will find the actual EIT bit easier. I will suggest concentrate on the Math section very very well. Master the Math, and you are more likely to pass than anything else.

And dont forget my motto "STUDY SMART NOT HARD". Instead of trying to cover up all the syllabus, try to cover only about 70-80 percent of it. But what you study....dont just study it....master it!! The exam is all about passing, not scoring. So you want to make sure you study the high weightage topics first and master them. All you care about is passing the exam. So it doesnt matter much even if you leave out a few small topics that end up being about 20-30 percent of the syllabus. You can guess those questions and get about 25% of them right. While guessing, make sure that you mark all answers the same...i.e....mark all answers "A" or "B" or "C" or "D". You probability of getting more answers right increases that way.

Overall, awesome book, very detailed and very well written.

I would recommend it to anyone wants to pass the EIT in the first attempt itself.

After being out of school for 15 years, I had a lot of work to prepare for the FE / EIT exam. I worked nearly every problem in this book over a 5 month period and didn't really have time to look at other books. I passed the Florida exam so it certainly helped.

My biggest complaint about this Manual is that it doesn't reference the equations found in the NCEES handbook. As you know, the NCEES handbook is the only reference material allowed during the exam. To solve the problems you have to rely on equations presented at the beginning of the chapter. These equations are not always found in the NCEES so it gets confusing.

Michael Lindeburg does an excellent job in preparing you for the FE. I was in school and still bought this book for reveiw. I am normal and forget some of the many things I've learned while in school, so this book was a good way to re-establish what I had forgotten and bring me up to speed on everything I would be tested on for the FE. Yes the problems in the book are more difficult than the actual test; however, when you are training to run a 10 mile race, do you practice by running 10 miles? No! you run 20, so on race day a 10 mile run is like a walk in the park. Buy this book, it does it's job. I passed the FE w/ 2 months of solid studying using only this book & the Civil prep book my Lindeburg.

Just remember the biggest portion of the General morning exam is math. Hit it hard. I would also recommend becomming familiar w/ the NCEES supplied reference handbook.

Good Luck!

This book is well-written and contains everything you'll need to know to get a high score for the FE Exam. There are a lot of practice problems that are more difficult than those encountered on the real test, so if you can't do all the problems, it shouldn't be a big deal when you take the real test.

Some things you should be aware of: This will be the only text you need ONLY if you plan on taking the general exam in the morning and the general exam in the afternoon (as opposed to an exam more specific in your field, like chemical engineering). The general exam in the afternoon is more difficult and covers different topics than the one in the morning (and pass rates are generally lower for people who take the afternoon general exam). Thus, if you plan on taking a module specific to your field in the afternoon, you'll need another FE review book specific to your field. With that said, all the chapters in this book are not necessary if you plan on taking a non-general exam in the afternoon. Make sure you find out which chapters you need to study or else you'll go through a lot of unnecessary material for the morning exam, which is what I did.

OK, in short, I just pass the exam from first shoot using primary this Book.

I am Elec. Engineer, graduate from 10 years back on Y2000. On academic wise I am rusty enough to fail in the first attamp with no dought .

About the book :
- Very organized in logical manner, I feel smooth when I am turning from one chapter to another in the same subject
- Chapters are smart: good SHORT & Focused on concept, a lot of excersis with descent difficulty makes you confident that you understand the concept, also coming with full detailed answers.
- Questions are harder than exam, IF you do all and correctly solve most of them and go through solution for your wrong answers, "Congratulation you passed FE "

So what I did exactly to pass ( I think if you follow me you will also pass from first shoot)
1- You should like to do study. Your are not torturing your self !! your doing something good for your brain & your future
2- You should be very realistic about TIME , some people can do it in 1-1.5 months 2-3 hr daily , but for me it took 6 months to study, BASED on :
i- when you graduate & how much you remember
ii- what actual time available per day & per weekend . For me after 3 + 8 hr = 11 hr of working 1 hr each day is my maximum
3- Simply you can't understand every thing, so you have to do real focusing on subject with :
i- Higher percentage of the exam ( Math 15%, engineering mechanics 10% , elec 9%, economics 8% etc.. ) I just master them and solve each & every problem with high focus at least for these 4 subjects
ii- What you really like so you can go through all details without pain. Simply I drop thermodynamics totally, material properties & little chemistry
4- I do one FULL revision in the last month
5- In the last week I just do exams
6- Purchase one exam from NCEES to really see if I am ready or not, it was for EE discipline ( 60 question general + 30 ee )

Good luck all

This is a great review book. It's complete and has tons of practice problems and diagnostic exams to help you pinpoint your troubled areas, as well as having a full-length morning and afternoon practice exam. I won't go into many more of the positives because they have been thoroughly covered by other reviewers. Instead, I'll list some of the book's (relatively) minor flaws.

For one thing, the book is subtitled "Rapid Preparation for the General FE Exam." As other reviewers have pointed out, rapid must be relative because this book is massive (>800 pages). Expect to take several weeks (months?) to prepare going at the fastest rate possible. Still, the FE exam covers so much material this is probably expected. This book takes an in-depth approach to covering all the kinds of problems one can expect to see on the FE Exam, but considering the exam only requires you to get ~50% of the questions right, it may be overkill. I've heard of alternative strategies that only focus on a smaller set of recurring questions that are constantly seen on the FE exam, expecting you to guess on the remainder (guessing is not penalized on the FE Exam and logically you should guess correctly on ~25% of the questions). Perhaps this would be a better studying alternative for those pressed for time.

Second, another problem I have when going through the practice problems is finding the equations used in the NCEES Reference Handbook. It seems many of the equations used in this book are either absent or greatly modified in the NCEES handbook (I'm using the 7th edition but I know the changes between it and the current 8th ed. are minor). If this book referenced what pages or sections the formulas are on in the NCEES Handbook, it would be extremely helpful.

Third, the last problem I have with this book is that it assumes you're taking the general exam for the afternoon exam... Which is fine, but what if you're talking a discipline-specific exam in the book? It would be nice for the author to mark which sections in this book are for the morning exam (obviously mandatory sections) versus the general afternoon exam so those taking DS afternoon exams can safely skip them to save time for studying, without having to constantly refer back to the tables of what material is covered on the various afternoon exams.

That said, this book is still very good in both the practice problems and the review sections. It has a money-back guarantee that you'll pass and I would definitely recommend it to anyone just graduating or who has been out of school for a few years and are wanting to take the FE exam!

I just got my results back from the October 2008 FE exam, and I passed. The pass rate in CA was only 43% this year; the FE Review Manual helped me to be in the 43% (not the 57%).

I worked every problem in the book from July through October, as I didn't have a year to get ready. Then, I took the practice exam in the book three days before the real exam, allowing me a day to review my results, correct my mistakes, and rest up for the real exam.

I was not surprised during the exam, because the FE Review Manual covered new material that we had not studied in engineering school.

I'll definitely use the PPI review manual for the PE exam, for which I'll be eligible in about one year.

For those of you test-takers, be sure to become completely familiar with the FE supplied reference manual. Even if you come up against a question during the exam for which you have no idea, you can save it for the end of the period, finish all of the questions that you do know, and then search the supplied reference for the correct solution or an educated guess.

Good luck !

This is by far the most complete FE review manual I've ever seen or heard of. Which is also the downfall of this book. This book is in no way, shape, or form, a cram manual. It requires you to start studying it about 3-5 months in advance and spend a week or so on each lesson. This may not be needed if you are currently in school getting ready to take the FE Exam but if you're not and you've been out a couple of years or even months, then this book is perfect. It goes through most if not all the types of problems from your first couple of years taking general studies courses in engineering. Going to school full-time and trying to study this book is hard to do especially when it comes to working the problems. This book is very comprehensive. It gives detailed explanations for the answers at the end of the sections and includes some practice tests and how long you should spend on each problem. I passed the FE the first time with going to school-administered review sessions and using this book as a reference. From the parts that I did do in this book, I can say that if you are able to get a good overview of this book, then you really should pass the FE with no problem. This is probably the best book but it is only for the truly dedicated person who will at least skim through this book and try to get some understanding about its topics. My advice for the FE is to study math a lot, basic civil and mechanical engineering problems, and make sure you master your discipline, which really shouldn't be too big of a problem. I fully recommend this book with the warning that you should get it way in advance (3-5 months) of the test date. It's the best you can get, but it is also very thorough also.

This book does give you an idea of what to expect from the FE, but the questions are more difficult then the ones on the actual test. I have recently taken the FE and passed it, but not really due to this book. While this book is excellent for anyone who has been out of school for awhile, if you are still in school or just graduated you should be fine. I would suggest getting a discpline specfic review book more, before this book. Dont get me wrong though it helps but not much.

I just found out this week that I passed the FE exam using this book to study for the morning exam topics. Having graduated with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering back in 2005 I knew that I would need help to study for the FE exam. I feel that this book prepared me pretty well for the morning portion of the exam. This book will prepare you for only the morning exam if you choose a discipline specific module for your afternoon test. I think that most sections of this book do go into a little more detail and cover additional topics that can help you in the afternoon as well though.

I chose the electrical discipline specific exam for the afternoon. I hear a lot of people saying that it is easier to take the "Other Disciplines" exam in the afternoon even if there is a discipline specific module that matches your undergraduate degree. I have to say though that this goes against common logic and the directions of the NCEES. I chose my discipline because the topics were more familiar than diving even deeper into courses which I had not taken during school... like Thermodynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Heat Transfer, etc... Plus if you look at the passing rates on the NCEES web site, in general there is at least a slightly higher pass rate for those who take their "appropriate" afternoon module if it is available. That was the case at least for last October's exam. I feel that you are bound to be more successful in topics which you have taken courses in and what you focused on in school rather than to hope that the Other Disciplines module will be easier and not as in depth.

I spent roughly five months studying from this book for the morning exam and one brutal month studying from my old college texts and notes for the Electrical afternoon exam. For me I think I made the mistake of trying to learn new topics, like the ones that I listed above. I feel it is better to really focus on the topics that you are familiar with since you will not have time during the morning test to really think through problems. I pretty much skipped over most of the unfamiliar topic questions in the exam except for the very easy ones. I figure that I actually made a good effort of answering about 2/3 to 3/4 of the questions on each half of the exam and then guessed the rest. The content in this book does cover everything that it needs to, but there is not a whole lot (or any?) theory and not much explanation. It is pretty much just a re-presentation of all the concepts and formulas that you need to know. I think that is why it is a mistake to try to use this book to learn any new concepts other than just understanding formula variables.

Also, I think it is very important to get a copy of the NCEES Supplied Reference Handbook to use during your studies. It is important to know the content and layout of the different sections so that you are not searching and wasting a bunch of time during the exam. When I bought mine last fall it was less than $20 including shipping. It is a small price to pay for the benefit of familiarity. Overall I think the FE Review Manual is a pretty thorough review tool for the general portion of the exam.