What is the FE Civil exam pass rate?

In NCEES's most recent published data (fiscal year 2024-25), 61% of first-time takers passed FE Civil, from 16,639 first-time examinees. Repeat takers passed at 32%. That 61% is tied with FE Other Disciplines for the lowest first-time rate of the seven FE disciplines, eight points below FE Mechanical.

Why is the FE Civil pass rate lower than the other FE exams?

NCEES does not publish a reason, so anything here is inference rather than fact. Two things are visible in the data itself. It has by far the largest and therefore most varied candidate pool - 16,639 first-time takers, roughly two in five of everyone sitting an FE exam - and its specification is unusually discipline-heavy: water resources, structural, geotechnical, transportation and construction together account for up to 71 of the 110 questions, so less of the paper is the general engineering core shared with other disciplines.

What reference do you get in the FE Civil exam?

The NCEES FE Reference Handbook, supplied on screen as a searchable PDF. It is the only reference permitted - no personal copies, and unlike the PE exams, no design codes or standards are supplied at all. Every formula you need is in the handbook, which shifts the difficulty from recall to selection: knowing which relationship applies, and finding it quickly.

Is the FE Civil exam harder than the PE Civil exam?

They are hard in different ways, and the pass rates are closer than most people expect. The FE is a breadth exam - 110 questions across 14 knowledge areas at under three minutes each. The PE is a depth exam in one chosen area, with longer and more involved problems, but with codes and standards supplied. Breadth is usually the harder thing to study for; depth is usually the harder thing to solve.

How hard is the FE Civil exam?

More engineers sit FE Civil than any other FE discipline, and it is tied for the lowest first-time pass rate of the seven. Those two facts are related, but not in the way most people assume — and neither of them tells you the useful thing, which is what the wrong answers on this exam are made of.

Updated August 26, 2026 · by the FE to PE Prep team

61%

First-time pass

~2.9 min

Per question

Knowledge areas

FE Handbook

Only reference

Where it sits among the FE exams

NCEES publishes pass rates by discipline each year. These are first-time takers in fiscal year 2024-25, with repeat rates and first-time volumes alongside.

FE exam pass rates and first-time examinee volumes by discipline, NCEES fiscal year 2024-25
Discipline	First time	Repeat	Volume
FE Mechanical	69%	37%	11,552
FE Chemical	68%	35%	1,873
FE Environmental	67%	37%	2,543
FE Electrical and Computer	64%	33%	5,882
FE Industrial and Systems	62%	25%	547
FE Civil	61%	32%	16,639
FE Other Disciplines	61%	29%	2,386

Read the volume column before the pass-rate column. FE Civil is sat by more first-time candidates than FE Mechanical and FE Environmental combined — roughly two in five of everyone taking an FE exam. A discipline that large draws a broader range of preparation than a specialised one does, and pass rates move with the population as well as with the paper.

NCEES does not publish a reason for the gap, so treat any explanation as inference. What is visible in the specification is that FE Civil is unusually discipline-heavy: water resources, structural, geotechnical, transportation and construction can account for up to 71 of the 110 questions between them, leaving less of the paper on the general engineering core that other FE disciplines lean on.

And note the third column. Repeat takers pass at 32%. Whatever makes the first attempt hard makes the second one harder, which is the strongest argument there is against treating a first sitting as a free look at the exam.

What the exam actually asks of you

110 questions in 5 hours 20 minutes of testing, inside a 6-hour appointment that also holds the nondisclosure agreement, an 8-minute tutorial and a 25-minute scheduled break. About 2.9 minutes per question. Your only reference is the NCEES FE Reference Handbook, on screen as a searchable PDF — no personal copies, and unlike the PE exams, no codes or standards at all.

That last point is worth sitting with. Every formula you need is supplied. The exam is not testing whether you remember Manning's equation; it is testing whether you can decide it is the right equation and substitute into it correctly, in under three minutes, on your two-hundredth question of the day.

FE Civil knowledge areas and question counts, per the NCEES specification effective July 2020
Knowledge area	Questions
Water Resources and Environmental EngineeringHydraulics, hydrology, water and wastewater treatment, stormwater.	10–15
Structural EngineeringAnalysis and design in steel, concrete and timber; loads and load paths.	10–15
Geotechnical EngineeringSoil properties and classification, stresses, bearing, slopes, retaining.	10–15
Transportation EngineeringGeometric design, traffic, pavement, curves and sight distance.	9–14
Mathematics and Statisticsshared coreShared with every FE discipline.	8–12
Staticsshared coreEquilibrium, trusses, centroids, friction.	8–12
Construction EngineeringScheduling and float, estimating, means and methods, safety.	8–12
Mechanics of Materialsshared coreStress and strain, bending, shear, deflection, combined loading.	7–11
Fluid Mechanicsshared coreStatics, continuity, energy, pipe flow.	6–9
SurveyingDistances, areas, levelling, coordinates, curves.	6–9
Engineering Economicsshared coreTime value of money, alternatives, depreciation.	5–8
Materialsshared coreConcrete, steel, asphalt and aggregate behaviour and testing.	5–8
Ethics and Professional Practiceshared coreMostly qualitative — codes of ethics, licensure, professional liability.	4–6
Dynamicsshared coreKinematics, kinetics, work and energy. The smallest block.	4–6

The four largest blocks are all civil-discipline material, and the smallest is dynamics at four to six questions. If your revision plan gives equal time to fourteen areas, it is giving dynamics three times the attention its weight deserves and geotechnical a third of what it needs.

Three problems, one from each of the biggest areas

Difficulty is easier to judge from a question than from a percentage. These come from our free FE Civil set. Try each before opening the solution — and then read the note underneath, because there is a pattern running through all three that is worth more than any of the answers.

1. Effective stress below a water table

Geotechnical is up to 15 questions, and this is the calculation the whole area rests on. It is two lines of arithmetic and it is the most reliably missed problem on the exam.

1
medium
A. Index properties, phase relations & effective stress
At the Memphis levee borrow area the water table sits at depth 2 m. Above it is moist soil with $\gamma = 17.5$ kN/m³; below it is saturated soil with $\gamma_{sat} = 19.5$ kN/m³. The effective vertical stress at point A, 3 m below the water table, is most nearly:
1. 93.5 kPa
2. 64.1 kPa
3. 34.6 kPa
4. 44.4 kPa
Show the answer & worked solution
Answer: B.64.1 kPa
$\sigma = 17.5(2) + 19.5(3) = 93.5$ kPa; $u = \gamma_w h_w = 9.81(3) = 29.4$ kPa; $\sigma' = \sigma - u = 64.1$ kPa. Distractors: report total stress $\sigma$ (pore pressure $u$ forgotten); apply $u$ over the FULL depth $h_1+h_2$ (water table mis-placed at the surface); and double-count buoyancy by using $\gamma'$ below AND subtracting $u$ .

What the distractors teach: Look at what 93.5 kPa is: it is the total stress — the right answer to a question nobody asked. Forget to subtract pore pressure and you land on it. Put the water table at the surface instead and you get 44.4. Use the buoyant unit weight below the table and then subtract pore pressure as well, double-counting the same buoyancy, and you get 34.6. Three plausible numbers, three specific slips.

2. Maximum moment on a simply supported beam

Structural is another block of up to 15. This is the most memorised formula in civil engineering, which is exactly why the distractors are built from its neighbours.

2
medium
A. Determinate analysis, internal forces, deflection & buckling
A simply supported beam of span $L=6\,\text{m}$ carries a uniformly distributed load $w=12\,\text{kN/m}$ over its full length (see the shear and moment diagrams). The maximum bending moment is most nearly:
1. 54 kN·m
2. 216 kN·m
3. 36 kN·m
4. 9 kN·m
Show the answer & worked solution
Answer: A.54 kN·m
$M_{max}=\dfrac{wL^2}{8}=\dfrac{12(6)^2}{8}=54$ kN·m at midspan (where $V=0$ ); the support shear is $V_{max}=wL/2=36$ kN. Distractors: used $wL^2/2=216$ kN·m (the cantilever fixed-end value, $4\times$ too big); dropped an $L$ to get $wL/8=9$ ; and used $wL^2/12=36$ kN·m (the fixed–fixed end moment, not the simple-span midspan value).

What the distractors teach: Every wrong answer is a real formula for a different beam. 216 kN·m is wL²/2, the fixed-end moment of a cantilever. 36 kN·m is wL²/12, the end moment of a fixed–fixed beam — and 36 is also the support shear here, so it looks doubly familiar. 9 kN·m is wL/8, the same expression with an L dropped. Recalling a formula is not the skill; recalling which case it belongs to is.

3. Open-channel discharge from Manning's equation

Water resources is the third of the three largest areas. Manning's equation is in the handbook — every term of it — and the exam still gets marks from it.

3
medium
A. Hydrology & open-channel hydraulics
A rectangular concrete channel 3 m wide carries water at a uniform (normal) depth of 1.2 m. Manning's roughness is $n = 0.013$ and the bed slope is $S = 0.001$ . The discharge is most nearly:
1. 6.68 m³/s
2. 5.84 m³/s
3. 0.211 m³/s
4. 9.89 m³/s
Show the answer & worked solution
Answer: A.6.68 m³/s
$A = by = 3.6$ m², $P = b + 2y = 5.4$ m, $R = A/P = 0.667$ m. $Q = \dfrac{1}{n}A R^{2/3}\sqrt{S} = 6.683$ m³/s. Distractors: the flow depth $y$ used in place of the hydraulic radius $R$ ; $R$ to the first power instead of $R^{2/3}$ ; and the slope used as $S$ rather than $\sqrt{S}$ .

What the distractors teach: Nothing here requires memory, only care. Use the flow depth where the hydraulic radius belongs and you get 9.89. Take R to the first power instead of the two-thirds and you get 5.84. Use S instead of √S and you get 0.211, which is off by a factor of thirty and still sits in the list looking like a discharge. Having the formula in front of you is not the same as substituting into it correctly at minute 200.

The pattern: in all three, the wrong answers are correct answers to slightly different problems. Total stress instead of effective stress. A fixed–fixed end moment instead of a simple-span midspan moment. Flow depth instead of hydraulic radius. This is what a breadth exam does — you switch context fourteen times in a morning, and the failure mode is not forgetting the formula, it is bringing the neighbouring one with you.

How to prepare for it

Weight revision to the specification. Water resources, structural, geotechnical and transportation are the four largest blocks; dynamics is four to six questions. Equal time across fourteen areas is a plan that ignores the exam's own weighting.
Practise with the handbook open from day one. Every formula is supplied, so the scoreable skill is selection and lookup speed, not recall. If you are practising from memory, you are training for a different exam.
Study the wrong answers, not just the right one. When you get a problem wrong, name the specific error — which neighbouring case did you import? That is a more durable fix than re-reading the correct method.
Work under time. Breadth exams are lost on the clock. 2.9 minutes covers reading, deciding, looking up and computing.
Take the first attempt seriously. Repeat takers pass at 32%, roughly half the first-time rate.

For every FE discipline's rates side by side, see how hard is the FE exam?; for a study plan with weeks in it, how long to study for the FE; and if you have already sat it once, what actually works the second time.

Common questions

What is the FE Civil exam pass rate?: In NCEES's most recent published data (fiscal year 2024-25), 61% of first-time takers passed FE Civil, from 16,639 first-time examinees. Repeat takers passed at 32%. That 61% is tied with FE Other Disciplines for the lowest first-time rate of the seven FE disciplines, eight points below FE Mechanical.
Why is the FE Civil pass rate lower than the other FE exams?: NCEES does not publish a reason, so anything here is inference rather than fact. Two things are visible in the data itself. It has by far the largest and therefore most varied candidate pool - 16,639 first-time takers, roughly two in five of everyone sitting an FE exam - and its specification is unusually discipline-heavy: water resources, structural, geotechnical, transportation and construction together account for up to 71 of the 110 questions, so less of the paper is the general engineering core shared with other disciplines.
How long is the FE Civil exam?: 110 questions in 5 hours 20 minutes of actual testing time, inside a 6-hour appointment that also covers the nondisclosure agreement, an 8-minute tutorial and a 25-minute scheduled break. That is roughly 2.9 minutes per question, covering reading the problem, finding the relationship in the handbook, and computing it.
What reference do you get in the FE Civil exam?: The NCEES FE Reference Handbook, supplied on screen as a searchable PDF. It is the only reference permitted - no personal copies, and unlike the PE exams, no design codes or standards are supplied at all. Every formula you need is in the handbook, which shifts the difficulty from recall to selection: knowing which relationship applies, and finding it quickly.
Is the FE Civil exam harder than the PE Civil exam?: They are hard in different ways, and the pass rates are closer than most people expect. The FE is a breadth exam - 110 questions across 14 knowledge areas at under three minutes each. The PE is a depth exam in one chosen area, with longer and more involved problems, but with codes and standards supplied. Breadth is usually the harder thing to study for; depth is usually the harder thing to solve.

Build your study plan

Tell us how long you have. We'll budget your hours across every knowledge area using the official NCEES question weights — the heaviest areas get the most time, which is the opposite of how most people study.

Work through seven more

Ten free FE Civil problems in total — statics, surveying, construction float, curves, economics — each with a figure and the full worked solution, including what each wrong answer is the right answer to. No signup.

Try the free FE Civil set Explore FE Civil

Pass rates are from the NCEES Squared 2025 annual report (fiscal year 2024-25); format and knowledge areas from the NCEES FE Civil CBT specification effective July 2020. Specifications, fees and rates change over time — confirm current specifics at ncees.org. Independent study resource; not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NCEES.