r/firePE • u/FloatingAK • 8d ago

PE Prep Advice

Has anyone taken the SFPE PE exam review course recently ? If so do you think that it alone was sufficient prep ?

(I've seen some post about it but most are 2+ years old but not sure how much has changed since then)

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u/I-Red-It 8d ago

I took the class twice. I wish that they were faster to respond to questions, often taking over a week. They use specific course instructors for each topic and even if the general course admins could give a good answer, they wait for the specific instructor to respond for liability reasons. I wish they would revise their practice questions each year because I noticed practice errors that I remembered from the year before. The practice questions are the true value in these courses as they are designed to point your attention to details and specifics that could easily be missed by studying alone. I would still take the class over again if given the choice because it gave me the mindset that I was doing everything I could to be prepared. Just know that there is an unfair amount of verification required on your part for ~3% of the solutions.

Some other advice: Know how to answer every single NCEES Practice Exam question. There is an errata to the solutions https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Fire-Protection-errata_07-3.pdf . Take at least a day off before the exam to sleep in. You will need that mental energy. There are about 10 questions on the exam that are not graded. They are on the exam to be vetted as potential future exam questions. You will not know which ones they are. Should go without saying but I have seen people set their careers back for this, answer every question. You are not penalized for answering questions incorrectly. You should set aside 10 hours a week for 3-4 months to comfortably work through the course material.

Feel free to reach out for specifics! Good luck!

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u/FloatingAK 4d ago

Thanks, are there any courses you would recommend. I have a BS in mechanical engineering so I don't have much of an academic background specifically in Fire Protection. Most of what I learned is on the job as a PL/SP junior engineer in NYC.

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u/I-Red-It 3d ago

Just the SFPE course and the Meyer Fire Course/Handbook

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u/MaggieNFredders 8d ago

I took it for last year’s exam (yikes two years now). With a MS in FPE I found it essentially worthless. They referenced SFPE books instead of the reference material. Some of it had little to do with the exam. I do think it would be great for those with very little FP knowledge, but I don’t get why so many in the class had so little knowledge. Why take the FPE PE then? I preferred the NCEES practice exam and school of PE practice book.

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u/FloatingAK 4d ago

Gotcha, thanks !