Mechanical Professional Engineering Exam Prep Forum

Looks like you are on your own. In other words, study for your exam yourself!!

Chancer!!!

It sounds like a reasonable idea, but speaking as a person who wrote questions for one engineering discipline's (not mechanical, though) PE exam, a "problem of the day", well constructed and with some answer-checking, would take 1-3 hours to come up with. I might be willing do something like that once every 3-6 weeks, but I absolutely don't have time between now and the end of the year.

My suggestion is that you contact ASME and get their workbook/ study guide, and NCEES for the latest info on the specific elements of knowledge that the test will cover. If you have a friend who's also considering taking the exam, work through the example problems and critique each others' solutions. Or, depending on where you are, sign up with a technical society of some sort for their PE preparation class. In my area, ESD (Engineering Society of Detroit) runs these classes once or twice a year.

I don't know for sure if this is still happening, or if it could have happened to you but some engineering curricula (and workplaces) are very light on coverage of engineering economics / financial analysis, and others seem to ignore statistical analysis, both of which will almost certainly be included on the exam.

I hope this helps. If you find a source for good practice problems, and can do so without violating copyright, posting them here as challenges would probably garner some nice example solutions (and some distractors...)

Anna O'Connell (P.E. in Michigan since 1984)

Thanks Anna, it's that sort of advice I'm looking for, unlike whoever that Guest was that said "your on your own" (glad I don't work with that person )

I could pick problems from sample exam, and change values to avoid copyright infringement. I have all four texts of Lindeburg, which is NCEES's suggested study materials.

Maybe I'll just kick this off myself, by posting questions from my references, I will force studying upon myself and help others?

I could follow the format of the main Lindeburg text, Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual for PE Exam, 11th Edition?

Any players out there?

Very Positive Anna,

Keep it up, i'm sure u will find sm time for curious, inquisitive and knowledge seeker.

I am not active participants in this forums, But I always read them.

I agree with Anna, find some PE prep course. The one I took was vary helpful as I took the EIT and PE tests back-to-back 10 years after college. I found the EIT the more difficult of the two due to the large number of questions over a short time period. The PE seemed easier since you can pick and choose 10 questions for solution, and I found a couple of problems that seemed to be "gimme's" and easy to solve.

Good luck with your studies!

Ried, I wish a prep course were that easy, but a course isn't readily offered in my area. The best I can do is ODU in Norfolk 30 miles away that runs 7-10PM two days a week. Traffic in my area is so bad, I'd have to add another two hours. With a newborn and small daughter and working wife, no way! Especially with my own job starting 6:30AM, it's almost suicide.

So, I thought I'd take a stab at trying to get some interested Engineers to exchange dialogue in here? Even existing PEs could take on the challenge problems like the one I listed below? Good practice for all us Engineers who utilize an average of 5% of what we actually know at our jobs. Some more, some even less.

What the heck, gotta start somewhere!

Problem #1, find the determinant of the following 4X4 matrix:

| 2 0 3 -1 |
| -1 2 -2 0 |
| 3 -2 0 2 |
| 1 4 0 0 |

I see so far, there were no "takers" on the above matrix determinant, but I'm not a quitter, the answer I got trying two different ways was -24 ... anyone want to confirm my calculation?

Come on Engineers, time to "show your stuff"

Upgrading some one for exams who is not instinctive in a given field is like a crime, yes if you can work on instinct that look good idea,

Predefined examination format doesn't make a good engineer or scientist or anything else, most of the times the greats of their fields were poor in their exams. Some even don't want to go schools,

Examination is eyewash in most of cases. What is the point in getting 90+% but one doesn't know to apply things in real life.

Ah, but Rakesh, the Professional Engineer exam is not given in or by schools, and candidates have to submit documentation proving they've done several years worth of real-world engineering work in order to be allowed to take (sit for) the exam.

A P.E. license is the pre-requisite to being authorized to assume legal reponsibility for certain types of engineering work where the health and safety of the public are potentially affected. From your profile, being in India, you might be more familiar with the term "Chartered Engineer". In the US, Professional Engineer is roughly equivalent to a Chartered Engineer.

Some employers require employees at a certain level to have a P.E., but outside Civil Engineering, this practice is rare. Some employers encourage employees to have a P.E., and may reward a successful candidate with a bonus or small raise, or enhanced promotional opportunities. And most employers pay no attention at all. Unless the engineer-candidate works at one of the few jobs which require a P.E., he or she goes through this whole effort primarily for personal satisfaction.

As far as "applying things in real life", I stuck with the manufacturing P.E. question-writing group in the face of some push-back from my employer because there were relatively few industry people involved in the process, but we were listened to *very* closely by the academics and bureaucrats. The group I was part of worked very hard to make our exam questions reflect real-world practices.

Anna

Anna,

Take the word "School" in larger way.

What I was trying to focus on was that most of the exams are based on the how much you remember that you had learnt, where as ability to remember things doesn't means ability to engineer things.

Another thing I was focusing on was the "instinct"

If one don't have the ability (instinct) to reverse the image of an article then one can not be good plastic mold engineer, but I am sure this kind of person may clear exams.because they remember certain things.

James watt invented steam power, Edison had 2000+patents not because of they were good in exams.

So here is four categories of peoples we have.

1 Good Engineer but poor in exams.

2 Good engineer and good in exams too.

3 Bad engineer but good in exams.

4 Bad engineers and bad in exams too.

Now you consider 100 peoples, divided in 25 each category,

Considering all the 25 of category 4 will fail in exams.

So we have 75 people available.

Now since category 1 is poor in exams so they should also fails.

So it is only category 2 and 3 which will pass exams, Means 50 People. Half of them are bad.

And the unfortunate part is 25 good engineers are already failed.

Rakesh -

I disagree with the assumption in your example that test-taking and engineering skills are uniformly distributed throughout the engineering profession, and even more with the idea that they're evenly distributed throughout the general population. But I'm a stats geek and hobbyist psychometrician. (Check my bio!) If I was estimating, I'd say that there's more like 5% of the profession who are good engineers but bad at examinations, 40% percent each of (ralatively) good and bad engineers who are good at exams, and 15% of people who might like to be engineers but are bad at both engineering and exam-taking. This might be hard on the 5% who are good engineers but bad on tests, but I maintain that there's nothing to keep them from doing their thing in engineering/inventing positions that don't *require* a P.E. license, which is most of them.

Also, the PE exam as given here is "open book". One may use any published references one wishes to bring, and a list of suggested references is given when you sign up. It's explicitly *not* a test of unaided memory, but of the candidate's ability to interpret problem statements and apply relevant engineering principles to the data given. Though if you aren't generally familiar with most of what you need to know, you won't be able to look up the answers. There is delibirately just enough time to check the details of methods/formulas and solve enough problems to pass the exam.

Anna

Anna,

4 categories and 25 persons were just for simplicity. If we will do it on real ground it is going to be far complicated.

I am also stats bug. And have full sympathy with you that you might be doing your work with best possible way. But at the end of day you will have to accept that equal number of bad professional passes exams and good professionals fails,

Numbers may be debatable.

By the way, I have a question do provides book's in your exams. Do you personally believe in providing books and all references to the examinee?

I believe that exams should be inclusive of books and may be computers and internets also.

I know it will be hard time for authorities to make a question paper. But that is the only way to prevent bad bugs passing.

What do you think?

Well, I thank all for the discussion of whether or not a PE license is something of credibility, but the fact of the matter is a P.E. license increases an Engineer's probability for employment and/or career opportunities.

Of course an exam is by no means a way to rate whether an Engineer is "good" or "bad", I for one scored a whopping 1150 on SATs back in the day, and my math score was a perfect 800. I was AWFUL at English & Literature but ironically if you understand what I'm writing right now, I must know a little something about English, huh? Bottom line is I had math scores that could take me to MIT, but unfortunately my low English score halted such Universities from even looking at me .. BOO!

Hi McDanida,

You bring up an interesting point. Obviously you do OK using English for everyday communication. But apparently, at least in the old style SAT, you didn't test well on your use of language and familiarity with the forms of literature. They've recently changed the SAT to eliminate the analogy section and add a writing component to the test. You might do better or worse if you were to retake the tests today...

SAT scores are highly correlated with academic success, in liberal arts types of majors. They are less highly correlated with success in technical fields. And in addition, academic success (GPA, etc) is less well correlated with career success than the universtities would like you to believe. (Which supports some of Rakesh's points, BTW.)

Not that obtaining a P.E. is a bad idea, or that I want to discourage you from pursuing it, but I have found that communication ability, both spoken and written, is *the* most important skill for career success. So unless you aspire mostly to the "hermit analyst" role, you might find that a class in technical writing, or a stint with the Toastmasters might be a more reliable way to get you where you want to be, careerwise.

Anna

Hey thanks Anna!

I'm not worried whatsoever about my English and communication skills. I've already taken all the tech writing I need, and I've done plenty presentations as well as "teach" for a technical college - it's when you ask me to find the "present participle as the objective verb within the preposition" that I'll have some problems

My communication skills are good, I now manage three Engineers below me, so my career is doing just fine ....

I believe the PE will greatly help my current job security as well as open new doors at other companies if I'd like?

I'd also like to use my license to venture with a buddy of mine who recently acquired his. We were thinking of opening a Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering consulting firm on the side where we could maybe swing by other companies to provide our stamps of approval/disapproval of certain projects - we have a LOT of military and DoD in our area and both of us work for Navy, so we know the need for PEs during various incoming systems, especially in the fields of safety and support & test equipment.