How to Effectively Make Guesses on the FE Exam
Time is winding down. You’re beat down from 3+ hours of racking your brain on integrals and old theorems from that class you should have paid more attention in. You have a whole section in your exam book with bubbles you have no idea what to do with. What should you do?
It’s inevitable that at some point on the FE exam you are going to have to take some shots in the dark. Even with the most stringent of engineering curriculums or test prep, it’s likely you will not be able to thoroughly work out all the problems with confidence. Don’t sweat it, here are some things to keep in mind.
- There is NO penalty for wrong answers. You either get credit for a correct answer or not. Thus you are making a big mistake if there are any blank, unanswered bubbles on your answer sheet.
- The FE exam is designed so that random guessing will not pass the test. But you’re not doing that right? If you follow the advice of doing the questions you know first, then you are picking up easy points. As long as you get questions you are stronger with correct first, you’ll be fine.
- Everyone else in that test room does not know what they are doing for each section too. The test is designed with the idea in mind that every engineer is not going to be knowledgeable in each general subject.
So it’s OK to guess. In fact you should guess. But how should you do it?
Action Items
Here are 3 actions you should take when you are forced to guess on the exam:
1. When guessing consecutive questions in a row, choose your favorite letter and go down the rows filling in the same answer bubbles. So your answer sheet would look like this:
1.b
2.b
3.b
4.b
Etc…
Do not bounce around filling in guessed answers on the test at random like this:
1.b
2.a
3.c
4.d
Etc…
Why guess questions in this matter? Remember that you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a question right. Because the test is designed to not allow you to pass simply on guessing, the actual correct answers will be scattered. By guessing the same letter in succession, you statistically have a better chance of getting something right than if you choose different letter on every guess. If you bounce around with your guesses, you are more likely to get none of them right.
You might say “what good does that do?” I may get 1 or 2 answers correct out of 8 total questions I needed to guess on in a row. Well that is 2 questions you wouldn’t have gotten right in the first place. Much better than going 0 for 8.
2. Don’t forget that if you can eliminate any choices, then your odds are even better. Take a glance at the answers and see if any of them seem out of the ordinary. It’s not uncommon to see the answer for choice “C” wouldn’t make sense mathematically.
“I know it can’t be letter B because there’s no way that current will be more than 100 amps. I’ll guess between letters A, C, and D”
3. If you are confident the questions around your guesses are correct, pick a different letter for your guesses.
“I know question 21 is D. I have to guess for questions 22,23, and 24 so I’ll put C, C, and C.”
Wrap Up
At the end of the day, you either get lucky or you don’t. But by making sure you score points on questions you know and being smart with your guessing, you move the odds just a little bit into your favor.
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