An FE retake study plan built from your diagnostic report

A first attempt has to be planned blind. A retake does not: you have NCEES's own breakdown of where you were short, area by area. The plan below uses it in four steps, and the free retake planner does the arithmetic for you.

Why a retake plan is different

You have already covered every area once, and the report tells you which ones did not hold. Spreading the next attempt evenly across the specification spends weeks re-learning areas you were already past the passing average on. The opposite mistake is as common: going hardest at the area with the worst bar even when it carries five questions.

Step 1 — Rank the areas by questions and gap

For each area, take how many questions it usually carries and scale it by how far short you were. NCEES's sample reading of a report does exactly this: a group of areas worth 27 questions that the examinee came closer to passing in is ranked ahead of a weaker group worth 12. The planner uses the midpoint of each area's NCEES range and a factor of 1 for well below, 0.5 for near and 0.15 for above. The ranges are NCEES's; the factors are our judgement.

The FE diagnostic report, explained

Step 2 — Size the practice

Scale a full first-attempt plan of 1500 practice questions by the same numbers, so the top-ranked area gets the most work. Below average everywhere, you get the whole first-attempt plan again; near average everywhere, about half. Divide by the weeks you have and you have a weekly number to hold yourself to.

Step 3 — Order the weeks

Rebuild the top of the list first, while there is time to come back to it. Keep a smaller, steady share for the areas you were past the average on, so they do not slide. Put full-length timed practice towards the end, under the real conditions: 110 questions in 5 hours 20 minutes, with the on-screen handbook and nothing else.

Step 4 — Change the method, not just the hours

If the report shows many areas near the passing average rather than a few far below it, the problem may be pace or lookup rather than knowledge. At exam pace a question gets about 2.9 minutes. Time yourself, and practise finding equations in the searchable FE Reference Handbook rather than in your own notes.

How the FE Reference Handbook behaves during the exam

A worked example

A made-up FE Civil report, to show the arithmetic: Structural and Geotechnical well below, Water Resources and Transportation near, every other area above, and 12 weeks to go.

578 practice questions in all: 49 a week for 12 weeks, which is at least 2.4 hours a week at exam pace.

The two fails lead; the two near-misses follow, ahead of every area that was already past the average; and the above-average areas keep a small share each so they do not slide.