Licensure for Engineers

How do you actually become a legitimate engineer you may wonder? Each state and territory has there own specific requirements to be come officially licensed, but they all are very similar. It is usually a 4 step process including graduation, the Fundamental Engineering (FE) exam, work experience, and finally the Principles and Practices Engineering Exam. 

The first step is to graduate from a accredited engineering program from a college or university. Literally 99% of the colleges or universities in the United States are accredited to be acceptable. After the school work, a fundamental type exam is taken to ensure that proper background knowledge is present. This is called the Fundamental Engineering exam. It includes such subjects such as mathematics, problems and statistics, chemistry, economics, business ethics, computers, statics and dynamics, and strength of materials, material properties, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity, and magnetism. Phew, thats a mouthful, and you better be sure that you know everything I just mentioned before you take this exam. No one said being an engineer would be easy. After hopefully passing the test, you must aquire a certain amount of work experience.  This experience usually must contain close work with a licensed engineer(s). Also during the work experience, one must be subjected to work with increasing levels of responsibility. After you fulfill the certain work requirements, you are now ready to take the Principles and Practices of Engineering (PE) exam. This is where all of your hard work throughout the past 5-10 years will show. This is said to be one of the hardest "professionalism" tests in any career field. Knowledge of design, materials, natural forces, and unnatural forces will be tested extensively. There is only a 52% pass rate according to the National Council of Examiners. That is some serious business, so if your trying to be a PE, you better be well prepared.