With so many options on the market, choosing the “right” calculator can be tricky, but luckily there are a few ways to narrow it down a bit. Unfortunately, you’re likely to need a pair of calculators for engineering school.
I’m a firm believer in practicing with the equipment you’ll actually use, and given that most Civil Engineering students will take the FE Exam in the US, I highly recommend picking a calculator you can use on both the FE and PE licensing examinations.
The best calculator for Civil Engineering school is a pair of calculators: one NCEES-approved calculator (either a TI-36X Pro or a Casio FX-991EX) for general use, and one graphing calculator (either a TI-84 Plus CE or a CASIO PRIZM FX-CG50) for when graphs are needed.
NCEES-Approved General Use
Professors are sometimes a little paranoid about students stealing exam answers, and given some of the fraternity test bank scandals I heard of in my undergrad career, I can’t say those fears are entirely unfounded.
Oftentimes professors will ban fancy Computer-Aided Algebra Systems calculators, or those with keyboards, from being used in exams to try to prevent questions walking off. Other times, especially in Calculus classes, calculators that can do the problems entirely for you will be banned.
This is where your good, lightweight, general-purpose calculator comes in.
Make sure to grab one of these cheap beater calculators to always have in your backpack, and odds are it’s going to just keep kicking well into your engineering career.
It pays to get a calculator that’s on the NCEES-approved calculator list, to ensure you can use it on your licensing exams down the road. My top recommendations are the TI-36X Pro and the Casio equivalent FX-991EX.
Best General-Purpose Calculator: Texas Instruments TI-36X Pro
This is the calculator I’ve used since junior year of undergrad, and I highly, highly recommend it.
When I was starting to study up for the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination, required to get your Engineering-In-Training (EIT) License, I headed over to check out what calculators are allowed on that exam.
NCEES allows any TI-30 or TI-36 series calculators on that exam. Not knowing any better, I checked out the price range. At that time, the TI-36X Pro was the most expensive, at all of about $18.
It comes jam-packed with all sorts of unit conversions, simple solvers for quadratic and cubic functions, and can even numerically integrate a lot of problems for you. Put simply, this is the calculator I wish I’d had from freshman year on up, and the one I still use every day. I probably own three.
Click here to check the current price of the TI-36X Pro on Amazon!
Runner-Up General-Purpose Calculator: Casio FX-991EX
I have to admit to not being a huge Casio fan. I grew up on Texas Instruments calculators, and don’t have much experience using Casio.
That being said, I understand that for someone who grew up using Casio, Texas Instruments products probably seem just as foreign.
The Casio FX-991EX is the rough equivalent my beloved TI-36X Pro. Geared towards engineering students, it’s got all your basic scientific calculator functions, along with some basic solvers, numerical integration and differentiation, and unit conversion functionality.
I also loved that it has the solar panel backup to the internal battery. The last thing you want on test day is a calculator battery going dead. On that note, do make a point of packing along spare batteries to any big exam!
On the Casio front, NCEES also allows all fx-115 and fx-991 models at the time of this writing in 2020. Definitely a good idea to confirm that this hasn’t changed before purchasing if reading in the future.
Click here to check the current price of the Casio FX-991EX on Amazon!
Graphing Calculator
When you’re doing mathematical heavy-lifting, especially in upper-level engineering classes, it’s quite common to let the Calculus fall by the wayside and use a graphing calculator go grab your answer quickly.
As mentioned above, it’s also important to keep a general-purpose scientific calculator on-hand for the classes that won’t let you break out the big guns, and to get used to using that little calculator ahead of your licensing exams.
Many people these days love the TI-Nspire, but there wasn’t a calculator I saw banned on more engineering exams on my way through school. They’re incredibly powerful, but tend to not hold battery power as long, and are often overkill for the tasks at hand.
If you already have an Nspire, you don’t need to panic and run out to buy another expensive graphing calculator. Just pay attention to the calculator rules your professors give, and ask around for an allowable grapher you can borrow for the exams where your Nspire isn’t allowed.
More commonly allowed graphing calculators I’d recommend are the TI-84 Plus CE or the Casio PRIZM FX-CG50.
Best Graphing Calculator: Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus CE
I was going to recommend my trusty old TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, but they’ve stopped making them, which makes sense, as this is an upgrade for an even more affordable price!
This is the latest and greatest of the excellent TI-84 Plus line, with even more new features. Graph in full color, solve systems of equations and integrate and differentiate whatever you need.
These appear to be designed to push the bounds of jamming as much functionality as possible into the calculator while stopping short of some of the most high-performance traits that get the Nspire banned on exams.
I’ll keep using my old TI-84 Plus Silver Edition (circa 2006) for now, but if I ever manage to break it, this is absolutely what I’m upgrading to.
Click here to check the current price of the TI-84 Plus CE on Amazon!
Runner-Up Graphing Calculator: Casio PRIZM FX-CG50
The Casio mirror image of the TI-84 Plus CE, the PRIZM FX-CG50 is another great option for graphing calculators, and I’ve only called it the runner-up due to my unfounded bias toward Texas Instruments. (No Block Dude Game, no deal!)
All joking aside, this actually looks like it may have a leg up on the TI alternative in a few areas. Easy options to solve for up to six unknowns at once, and all sorts of spreadsheet work that you’d need to upshift to the Nspire for in the world of Texas Instruments.
Featuring full-color graphing, 3D graph capability, and a lower price tag than the Texas Instruments alternative, if you’re a Casio fan, this is the calculator you want, especially for your Electricity and Magnetism class!
Click here to check the current price of the PRIZM FX-CG50 on Amazon!
Conclusion
Remember that you’ll almost certainly need both an everyday-use scientific calculator and a more high-powered graphing calculator to carry you through your Civil Engineering education.
While you’re getting accustomed to a calculator, it may as well be an extremely-reliable model that you’ll be allowed to use on your FE Exam your senior year of undergrad, and hopefully on your Principles of Engineering Exam when you sit to get your PE License four years later.
If you need any study materials for the FE or PE exams, hit my affiliate link to head over to PPI and use code “ERNFT” at checkout for 15% off all your study and reference materials for those exams.
They’re not cheap, but they help a ton, and those reference books are basically required for the PE exam!