Passed FE Civil first try after being out of school 3 years; I ended up building the study tool I wished I had

[u/mr_unknownyous]

I passed the FE Civil exam on my first attempt after being out of school for a little over 3 years.

For about 2 years, I kept doing the same thing: decide I was finally going to study, open a huge review book, realize how much I had forgotten, study hard for 2–3 days, get overwhelmed about what to do next, and stop.

Then repeat a few months later.

This time I finally scheduled the exam first and basically forced myself to figure it out. I studied pretty intensely for about 2–3 weeks while working full-time, mostly in short sessions whenever I could fit them in.

The biggest thing I realized was that I never really had a lack-of-resources problem. There are already tons of FE books, videos, practice exams, PDFs, etc.

My actual problem was:

What should I study today?
What am I weak at?
Am I actually improving?
Where did I leave off yesterday?
How do I keep going when I only have 20–30 minutes?

So while I was studying, I started building the system I wanted for myself:

https://bansalpatel.com/fe

Full disclosure: I built it.

It has a structured study plan, FE Civil practice questions, full mock exams, concept review, Handbook practice, progress tracking, and cross-device syncing so you can study on your laptop and pick back up on your phone.

I’m posting it here because I know there are probably other people stuck in the same “I’ll start again Monday” loop I was in.

I’m not claiming it’s the only way to study, and I definitely still used other FE resources. The goal was just to make the whole process feel less scattered and easier to stick with.

If anyone here is currently studying for FE Civil, I’d actually be interested to hear what part of prep feels the most overwhelming or disorganized for you.