Don’t study for your FE exam until you read this!

Many students who fail their FE exam don’t necessarily fail because they did not put in enough study time. On the contrary, they studied really hard for months! But how could all this effort go to waste?

There is a lot of confusion about how to learn the concepts, skills, and techniques needed to confidently answer all types of FE questions. It all begins with active learning, which naturally leads to legitimate knowledge and skill acquisition.

Many students misunderstand the real meaning of active learning and waste valuable time. Students believe that being truly “active” should involve studying extensively using a variety of resources like YouTube videos, textbooks, practice portals, and online courses.

They load up on resources, go through the lots of videos, do a bunch of practice problems, and repeat the same cycle for all FE exam topics. 

How’s this a problem? 

Active Learning is not about resources, technique, or whether a student can complete thousands of FE exam practice questions.

The “Active” part is all about how you use your brain. How you think about FE practice problems is more important than simply going through a “bunch” of practice problems.

Here’s an example…

If a student tells me, “I’m going to watch all of the YouTube and course videos you have.”

Is this active learning? 

No. This is passive learning. There is no such thing as effective passive learning. The student’s brain is passive because they are not breaking down concepts for themselves. Watching videos does not engage the brain in the same way that deliberately struggling through concepts and practice problems does.

So, watching a bunch of videos, doing a bunch of practice problems, or using that “top class” online course does not guarantee that you’ll remember what you’re learning. The missing piece is how you use your brain. Both the quality and quantity go hand in hand to produce good practice results.

How can you do active learning properly? 

Here are 6 questions to ask yourself as you continue with your FE exam preparation:

1) Am I arriving at my OWN solution to each practice problem? 

2) Am I struggling, making mistakes, and learning from these mistakes? 

3) Am I actively recalling knowledge I learned before? 

4) Am I understanding not only how to use a formula, but also how the variables in the formula relate to one another?

5) Am I doing timed quizzes, timed exams, and timed practice problems? 

6) Am I reflecting and questioning things, especially when something “doesn’t make sense” to me? 

If the answer to these questions is no, do your best to remind yourself to do these things before and during your next study session.