Coursework & Fieldwork How to get a headstart on the NBCOT exam?

[amjadjamal]

I keep reading over at indeed.com on how hard this exam was. I even spoke to real OTs and everybody says that the exam is challenging. So my question is, how do we get a head start on preparing for this material during school?

Does anybody have any recommendations?

I mean could we get the review book and use the sections in it, as we are taking that specific class, so by the time its time for the nbcot test we would have gone through the book a few times?

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[lcs2074]

From what I've heard, OT school itself is so intensive that its best to focus on doing well in the classes and not worry about the exam until close to graduation time, or after graduation. NBCOT's website has some resources: http://www.nbcot.org/exam-preparation and there are a surprising amount of study resources and flashcards on pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=nbcot

Also, this: http://www.pediastaff.com/resources-creating-your-nbcot®-otr®-or-ota®-certification-exam-study-plan

 

[c2902]

Our professors told us NOT to worry about it at all during our first year. You're learning so much about the foundational aspects of the profession that it's not really practical to study for the exam when you haven't covered half the material yet. They even told us not to worry about studying over this current summer (I will start my second year of the program in the fall - MSOT). In reality, from what I've heard, I don't think anyone really starts seriously studying until closer to the actual point of graduation. Over this current summer, I plan to 1) RELAX!, 2) read/re-read important parts of our Occupational Therapy for Physical Dysfunction book (which is a commonly used textbook in many OT programs), 3) brush up on Neuro, and 4) work a ton to make some money so when I am doing fieldwork next summer and can't work, I won't starve The one thing they did tell us to do was to keep a lot of our textbooks so we can use them to study for the NBCOT, and also to be able to reference during fieldwork.

If you want to keep tabs on the kind of questions, you can "like" the NBCOT Facebook page - every Monday, they post a review question for the OTR and the COTA exams, provide the answer choices a day or so later, and then the correct answer AND the rationale behind the wrong ones by the end of the week. It's a good way to build a little confidence when you can read the question and guess correctly, which I've been able to do even after this first year (not always, of course, but sometimes). However, they recently had an issue with people copying the questions and distributing them (and tried to fine the people who did it), so you are NOT allowed to copy and save them, even for personal use.

 

[BowlofSunshine]

Don't worry about the exam right now. You shouldn't start studying until Fieldwork II.

Read the pinned post I made about what you should know about OT school but they don't tell you.

I recommend TherapyEd (the study guide and prep course). Also AOTA has created a prep exam which is recommended as well.

The reason I DON'T recommend NBCOT exam prep is because they sell their exams "a la carte" styles and if you buy all the exams together, they are almost the same price as the exam. Plus, you don't get rationales like you do with AOTA and TherapyEd.

Best to you in the program?!

 

[FutureOT2013]

I would wait until after you finish all of your fieldwork, fieldwork placements get more intense at the end because you are taking on a full day's caseload and I can't imagine a setting where you aren't super busy. I agree with the TherapyEd recommendation, I used it and did not take the course and passed the first time. I heard the course is helpful, but I know people who didn't even use a study guide at all and did fine, just studied the material from the program. Each person is different I guess. No one from my cohort took the TherapyEd course and all of us have passed on the first try so far, a few of the BS/MS students passed on the 2nd try.

My personal opinion about the study guide though is that it is very thick and is filled with a LOT of very detailed information that is impossible to remember for the test, but taking the mock tests on the CD were the most helpful part. I went over all of the answers and read the rationales which helped reorganize my thinking as a test taker. I attempted to read the entire book cover to cover but changed my strategy about halfway through after I rationalized that most of the information was probably not going to be covered (I was right). After talking to a lot of people who passed and then taking the test myself I found that the actual NBCOT exam is more about the OT process than it is about specific interventions and modalities. That being said, there are things you should focus on more than others like SCI levels, CVA, diabetes, models and FOR's, pediatric developmental stages, Rancho levels, Allen Cognitive Levels, CP, psychiatric conditions, etc. as many questions will require that you have knowledge about certain diagnoses and how they present an occupational deficit. I would focus on the most common diagnoses that OT's tend to work with. As far the answer choices, there will always be more than one answer that could work so you have to pick the BEST answer as they are testing your clinical reasoning. I studied for about 4-5 weeks all day and not on weekends and felt prepared. You can't even sit for the test until your Masters posts on your transcripts, between your last day of fieldwork, your degree finally posting, and when NBCOT sends you your Authorization To Test letter, you might have a month or two before you can take the test so you can use that time to study.

Don't worry about the exam right now. You shouldn't start studying until Fieldwork II.

Read the pinned post I made about what you should know about OT school but they don't tell you.

I recommend TherapyEd (the study guide and prep course). Also AOTA has created a prep exam which is recommended as well.

The reason I DON'T recommend NBCOT exam prep is because they sell their exams "a la carte" styles and if you buy all the exams together, they are almost the same price as the exam. Plus, you don't get rationales like you do with AOTA and TherapyEd.

Best to you in the program?!

 

[gialuan]

Take it from someone who just passed her exam 4 months ago- don't bother studying until you're officially done with all of your fieldwork. I finished my last fieldwork mid-December officially graduated in December 31st, 2013. Started studying on the week of Christmas and took the exam Feb 20th.

As for studying, I used the TherapyEd book and my school's NBCOT review notes. In my opinion, the TherapyEd book is very detailed, but it's also padded with lots of information that I did not need to know- like scissor skills and other peds stuff. They didn't include the SCI levels, which weren't a big presence in my exam, but is one topic that you MUST study. In addition, their practice questions, though very difficult, aren't representative of the actual exam questions. For me, the best practice questions came from Castle. They do cost a lot and you don't get the rationales, but they are as close to the exam as you can get. There were a few on the actual exam that were just about the same as the Castle questions but reworded a bit. My program director also required us to take the Occupational Therapy Knowledge Exam (OTKE) and those questions were also representative of the real thing. This exam is set up by your director, so you have no control over this one. The downside to this one is that you also don't get to see the answers or rationales.