Can you pass the Mechanical Engineering (ME) board exam with self-review? What the law says, the passing rate, review center costs, and what you need.
Mariano Luiz King
Published November 9, 2026
Yes. You can take the Mechanical Engineering (ME) Board Exam, the Mechanical Engineers Licensure Examination, without a review center, and no law requires one for your first attempt. Whether self-review works for you depends on your discipline and on a few things specific to the ME exam. This post covers the law, the passing rate, what review centers cost, and what you'd need to do it alone, as of November 2026.
After reading this, you can decide whether to self-review for the ME exam, and what you need if you do.
The rules come from RA 8495 and PRC's documents. The passing rates come from PRC's results, which I collected in board exam passing rates. Review center prices are from the centers' own sites. I checked all of them on November 9, 2026.
To pass, you need a 70% average, with no subject below 50% (RA 8495).
After the third failure, RA 8495 makes you wait one year before you can take the exam again. The law has no rule for retaking only some subjects.
The full retake rules for 10 boards are in what happens if you fail the board exam.
The ME passing rate was 37.0% in August 2026 (51.9% in February 2026).
That's everyone who took the exam, with or without a review center. PRC doesn't publish separate rates for self-reviewers, so this number can't tell you which method works better. It only tells you how hard the exam is overall.
I couldn't find an ME review center that publishes its fees on its own site. Ask for a written quote, and compare it with the published prices in review center vs self-review.
I built prepPH, so I'm biased. It has ME practice questions with explanations, organized by subject, with spaced repetition built in. That covers the practice part of a self-review. It doesn't replace live teaching, and it won't count as a refresher course if your law ever requires one.
Self-review can work for the ME exam, but it's one of the harder boards to do alone. The passing rate is low, the days are long, and the TOS is old. If you self-review, spend most of your time on timed problem sets, not reading.
Yes, it's allowed. No law requires a review center for your first attempt. Whether it works depends on your discipline and your practice.
No. But after the third failure, RA 8495 makes you wait one year before your next attempt.
It was 37.0% in August 2026 (51.9% in February 2026), based on PRC's results.
Ready to test yourself? Try the free ME board exam reviewer. For the general comparison, see review center vs self-review.
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