Preparing to take the Chemical Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam

After finishing my undergraduate education, I wanted to feel I had reached my destination, despite knowing, in the back of my mind, I would still need to take and pass the Chemical FE Exam. Fast forward to now, I’m beginning to prepare/study for the exam. I paid the standard $175.00 exam registration fee via the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) and now have up to 12 months to schedule my exam. It appears as though there is a multitude of options available for scheduling. If you live near a major city, odds are that you will have the same level of ease for finding a good time to take the exam in advance. Before signing up through the NCEES, scheduling was something I was concerned about, it wasn’t always the case that the exams were so widely accessible – they used to only be paper and administered maybe twice a year.

Since I have up to 12 months of time to take the FE Exam before my payment gets swept under the rug, I’ve bought a few study materials. What I bought is listed as hyperlinks to where they can be bought below:

  1. FE Chemical Review Manual by Michael R. Lindeburg, PE on Amazon
  2. FE Reference Handbook by NCEES on Amazon

Anyway, other materials I’ve not bought, but just had in my possession include:

I should also mention that the Pilot Frixion Clicker Erasable Gel Pens are a highly invaluable tool for engineering work, worlds better than any pencil I’ve ever used. Highly recommend these writing utensils.

I look forward to how I will progress in my preparation. I plan on scheduling my exam after I’ve consistently worked on practice problems for a couple of weeks and feel that I can keep the habit going. There is no sense in scheduling the exam without a complete understanding of how well you know the material. I estimate it will take me up to 25 hours of reviewing the review manual and reference handbook before I truly understand what additional studying I need. I wanted to publicize my experience preparing to take the FE Chemical exam and be completely transparent about what I wind up doing and how I fare after taking the exam. I didn’t find too much information on the topic when I quickly searched on Google. If I wasn’t able to find much, I’m sure others weren’t either and so I will be publishing my experiences here on my blog, every day I study. Join my newsletter if you’d be interested in knowing when I post next. Spoiler: it will likely be tomorrow. Until then….

“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

-Theodore Isaac Rubin