Professional Engineer (PE) Licensure
There is no way to know now if you’ll ever need a PE license. Certain jobs require
it. State law requires it before you can advertise your services as an engineer. There are
three steps to getting a PE license: pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam,
work for four years, pass the PE exam. To help you on this path, we require you to take
EF 402, which prepares you for the FE exam. Although you must pass EF 402, taking the
FE exam is not a graduation requirement. However, there is no time in your life when it
will be easier to pass the FE exam than when you are a senior in college. The exam covers
fundamentals (statics, dynamics, strength of materials, etc.) Because no job requires you
to use all of those, you will forget much of it in the years after college. Hence, preparing
for the exam several years after college could be very difficult. (Think about having a fulltime
job, and perhaps a family, and then finding time to review the fundamentals on your
own. And after passing the FE exam, you would then have to prepare for the PE exam.
People who have to do that sincerely regret not having taken the FE exam in college.) The
fee for the exam and the time to take it will be the same whether you take the exam as a
senior or ten years later. But the preparation time will be significantly different. Conclusion:
You should take the exam during the semester that you take EF 402.