APPENDIXB
Brief Review of Fundamentals of Engineering (FE)
ExaminationAnyone who wishes to practice the engineering profession and offer professional services to the
public must become registered as a professional engineer (PE). Boards in each of the 50 states
regulate the profession of engineering. The process of registering or licensing oneself as a PE is
a multistep process.
Engineering programs accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of
the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) are acceptable to all boards as
qualifying education. After obtaining the necessary education and applying to the board, one will
be allowed to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination. The FE examination,
formerly called the Engineer-in-Training (EIT) examination, is offered twice a year and is
usually taken by engineering-college seniors or fresh graduates. After successfully passing the
FE examination, one is known as an Engineer-Intern (EI), and is admitted to the preprofessional
status as a newly trained engineer. The EI must then obtain a minimum of four years of acceptable
experience before being qualified to take the Professional Engineering (PE) examination. This
text should serve as an excellent reference to prepare for both of these examinations.
The FE examination consists of two parts, morning session and an afternoon session.
Administered by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES),
140 multiple-choice problems with 5 choices for each problem out of which one correct answer
is to be selected are given in the morning session; 70 problems are given in the afternoon session.
Candidates for the FE examination are provided with a booklet called the Reference Hand-
book, which contains relevant tables, formulas, and charts along with the question paper. Can-
didates are not supposed to bring their own reference books to the examination. The electric
engineering topics covered on the FE exam will now be outlined in this appendix, and the location
of these topics in this text will be identified to facilitate study and review.FE EXAMINATION TOPICS
A combined topic and subtopic list for the morning and afternoon sessions of the FE examination
is given here, along with the relevant sections of this text.- DC circuits
Electrical quantities Section 1.1
Resistor combinations and Ohm’s law Section 1.2
Maximum power transfer Section 1.2
Kirchhoff’s laws Section 1.3
Node-voltage and mesh-current analyses Section 2.2
Thévenin and Norton equivalent circuits Section 2.1
Superposition and linearity Section 2.3 - Capacitance and inductance
Series and parallel combinations Section 1.2
833