Reddit reviews FE Other Disciplines Review Manual

I took the FE Electrical and Computer exam on Sat, Feb 27 and just found out today that I passed so I might be able to help you with studying for it

I started studying around the beginning of February.

1. Like marvellousmedicine said, you most definitely want to look at the reference book they supply you. You will have it on the test and it's good to know where everything is in it. The reference manual is almost 300 pages long so it's good to know which keywords to type to get to the section you want to be in. The test is computer based now so the screen will be split between the reference manual and the actual test. (you can ctrl+f the book)
   
2. I went through Lindeburg's FE Review Manual and the Other Disciplines Review Manual. My roommate rented the first book and it was a lot cheaper a month ago. My school's library had the Other Disciplines Review book that I could check out (for free). So your school might even have the first one as well. The reason I looked at the Other Disciplines Review book was because it had some other electrical sections that the first didn't have. There are also a lot of sample questions in the Lindeburg books. I would go through the sections and try to do the sample questions only using the FE Reference Manual as that will all you get to use on the test. The Lindeburg books are outdated. They were made before they changed the format in 2014 but the content and questions are still good.
   
   In the back of the FE Reference Manual they have all the topics that will be covered by the test as well as how many questions for each topic. The questions are terribly difficult and I didn't think they were trying to trip you up. I am more interested in power so the computer, communications, signals topics gave me the most trouble. If you have any more questions feel free to ask me.
   
   edit: here's what on the Electrical Exam and the Other Disciplines book is not worth whatever price is listed below. The electrical sections I looked at spanned maybe 30-40 pages. I would only look at it if you can get it from the library.

As long as you don't let patent bar and FE prep get in the way of other important things, I don't suppose there's any reason not to do this. Everybody needs a hobby. But you should be aware that the odds of it leading to an actual job as a patent agent are very small.

1. Probably "Other Disciplines" (formerly known as "General"). But hard to say for sure.
   
   
2. Lindeburg's guide was fantastic, absolutely head and shoulders above everything else -- for the pre-2014 paper-based exam. However, it's probably not very useful any more. I'm not in a position to say what's good, but Lindeburg does have post-2014 subject-specific guides.
   
   
3. Not without something else, e.g. exceptional networking ability or an existing connection. If you look at patent job boards, you'll see that the entry-level jobs you might occasionally see are exclusively for someone with a specific technical background. Even people who have technical backgrounds outside EE often have a very hard time finding patent work.
   
   
4. I don't think so. (But if you were, hypothetically, to take the Mechanical Engineering FE and then try to hold yourself out as having a "mechanical engineering background" or some such, obviously that would not end well.)

Link to amazon listing

I'm looking at the used versions.

As well, is the FERM a good idea as well? By that I meant the overall FE manual without disciplines. I think that's what it is anyhow

I "used" the FE Other Disciplines Review by Lindeburg

I say "used" because I probably went over 7 out of the 60 something sections in the book.

Major is Petroleum engineering, and I graduate in December.

For me there was a ton of structural stuff. Finding how much load something has. I had zero idea how to do those. Also a lot of problems could be passed with just F=ma. Quite a few electricity problems too. Parallel series especially.

Finding equations with the book is pretty easy if you know who to use the find function.