I just discovered that my son, a future Civil Engineer (he hopes) will have to take the FE exam. As he considers his acceptances, should he try to find out the pass rate for students from each university? Would this be a good measure of the quality of a given program? If this is not a valid measure or perhaps not readily accessable, how should we compare the programs? I hate to rely on the so-called “rankings” or salary data reported to the career centers and I have no contacts in the industry other than a couple of neighbors who report that their employers hire from the same schools they themselves attended.
No, it’s really not a good measure. Not everyone needs to take the FE exam and the quality of the program is not always directly correlated with the quality of the students who pass the program - there were definitely a few very excellent engineering programs in the school I went to for which the students just weren’t of a very high caliber, which made the whole program look worse even though it did a lot to prepare said students for the future.
Either pick a school whose name brand advantage will make the job search much easier, or pick a school of decent overall quality that is financially feasible (most high-quality state schools are good for this). Either works.
I would not use it as a measure either. Any solid student at a decent (i.e. ABET) school should be able to pass the FE. Other than some outlier data, such as NeoDymium experienced, you would be splitting hairs if you looked at pass rates by school. Nationwide the pass rate is 80% or so.
https://ppi2pass.com/faqs/FE_Exam_Pass_Rates
A little off topic, but I would encourage your son to take the FE no matter what engineering field he ends up in. It’s the first step of a path to get the PE, which is required in some areas.
I wouldn’t get too caught up in the numbers, but a low FE pass rate should raise a red flag. The exam should be easy for anyone who has just finished their undergraduate education.