The FE diagnostic report, explained

If you did not pass the FE, NCEES sends you a diagnostic report. It is the only feedback the exam gives, it is easy to misread, and NCEES's own guidance on reading it contains one instruction most people skip: weigh each area by how many questions it carries, not only by how badly it went.

What is on it

One row per knowledge area in your discipline's specification. Each row carries three things: the number of items in that area, your performance as a scaled score from 0 to 15, and a bar comparing your performance with the average performance of the examinees who passed.

Column by column

Number of items

How many items that knowledge area had. The specification gives each area a range of questions rather than a fixed count, and the ranges are very different sizes: in FE Civil, Ethics and Professional Practice is 4–6 questions and Structural Engineering is 10–15. This column is what turns a weak bar into a priority, or not.

Your performance, 0 to 15

Your result in that area, converted to a scaled score from 0 to 15. NCEES uses the scale so reports are consistent across exam forms, and so you can compare your own results from different attempts. It is not a percentage, and NCEES says the number of questions you answered correctly cannot be worked out from it.

The comparison bar

Your performance is a solid line; the average performance of the examinees who passed is a dashed line. The stretch between them is how far apart you were. NCEES says the chart is not drawn to scale: it shows where you stood relative to passing examinees, not a measured distance.

What it cannot tell you

• The passing score. NCEES does not publish it, and says the report cannot be used to determine it.
• How many questions you got right, in total or in any area.
• Which questions you missed. NCEES does not release exam questions or answers.

How NCEES says to read it

The Examinee Guide walks through a sample report and draws two lines. Areas where performance was significantly below that of the passing examinees contributed to the fail, and NCEES recommends substantial study of them. Areas near or just above the passing examinees can still be improved by further study.

Then it does something easy to miss. In its worked sample, a group of areas the examinee came closer to passing in is put ahead of a group they did worse in, because the first group carried 27 questions and the second 12 — in NCEES's words, “giving me more opportunity to improve”. The size of the gap is half the decision; the number of questions is the other half.

Reading each bar into one of three bands

The free retake planner asks you to read each bar into one of three bands, which follow NCEES's own wording:

• Well below — your solid line is clearly short of the dashed line. NCEES's “significantly below”.
• Near — close to the dashed line, a little short of it or just past it. NCEES's “near or just above”.
• Above — clearly past the dashed line.

It asks for the bar rather than the 0–15 number on purpose: the bar is the comparison with people who passed, and the number on its own does not say how far from them you were.

An FE retake study plan built from your diagnostic report