Is the FE just luck?
Hi everyone, thank you in advance for your tips.
My story is that I studied BME, and worked in medical devices for two years before switching to civil and I’ve worked for two years in civil… so I’m 6 years out of school working 44ish hours a week (just while I was studying, I have to work 50 hour weeks now😅😅😅) and trying to do this exam this year.
I studied a lot of the first exam and then covered my basic misunderstandings right after. I had only a month and a half between the first and second attempt. The second time, I spent hours covering statics and mechanics of materials and working hard to understand core misconceptions that weren’t taught in my degree. I also reviewed math and could breeze through it, truly felt I was pretty ready. Math actually really didn’t give me problems on the first test.
On my exam for the second time I had like 10-15% matching or free choice problems though. It took a ton of time, when my first exam felt more reasonable with the mix of multiple choice vs other ones…. I had at least two free choice problems for fluids alone and at least 2-3 matching for construction alone on the second test…. Like definitely took a lot more time than I thought. I asked my friend who passed and she only had a few alternative answer problems.
How is it fair for ncees to have such different mixes of types of problems? It was very different the two test days. My first exam I was kind of an emotional wreck so I expected it. Second one I spent time calming myself and making sure I was in a good mental state and again, spent 50 hours between exams studying…. And my score only went up 2% between exams.
Any advice on what to do and if I rush back into it would be appreciated…. I can’t rush back really since I can’t take it until October now and have a wedding in Italy in September anyway. I used mark mattson materials to study and I used school of PE…. I can do more school of PE problems but yeah, the second test felt like it had no easy problems…. Just time consuming ones….
And most importantly, is this exam just luck?? I felt I had math and economics and ethics down? I’m confused tbh. The first photo is my results from my second (I learned structural and geotech for the second and brushed up on everything, including water resources) and second photo is my first results.