If you’re a PT student in the US and the date for your NPTE is starting to appear on the horizon, it may be time to start devoting your days to studying all the material you’ve been learning over the past three years. But how far away from the exam date should you really start preparing and studying?
While there is no one single answer as to when students should begin studying for the NPTE, most students take approximately eight weeks to prepare for the big day.
Some students will take more than eight weeks, lengthening their study time to ten to twelve weeks. Some students will only take approximately six weeks.
If you’re wondering what plan of attack will be best for you when it comes to studying for the NPTE, keep on reading!
Why the NPTE is unlike any exam you’ve ever taken before
Here’s why you likely just can’t be casual about studying for the NPTE: This exam will comprise three years worth of didactic curricula – and you’ve never taken an exam like that before.
For all of your undergraduate studies and all of your PT school up to this point in time you have been tested with a final exam on a single subject, and then moved on. This exam is now a final exam of all your other final exams – which means there’s some material that you covered a LONG time ago that you now need to brush up on.
How to know when you should begin to study for the NPTE
As you well know at this point in the game, every PT student is different. But thankfully it doesn’t matter what other students need or what will work best for them.
Right now, it’s not about them – this article is all about YOU.
While I can’t tell you when it’ll be best for you to begin your studies, here are three important questions to ask yourself to help begin to find the answer:
- How much of a struggle was it to get through all of your courses to make it to this point?
- How confident are you in your Musculoskeletal, Neurological & Cardiopulmonary PT knowledge?
- What is your external school environment life going to be like for the next few months?
These questions are all important to have answers to as they will help to paint a picture for you of what your study plan timeline will need to look like.
Take some time to reflect on these questions and be completely honest with yourself as you do so. Doing this up front before you try to hash out a study plan can save you some serious headaches and stress.
The bottom line: Don’t just go by what other students or peers are doing for themselves or suggesting that you do. You need to figure this out for yourself! The better you can answer these questions, the more confident you will become in understanding how much time you will need to prepare for the exam.
How much of a struggle was it to get through all of your courses to make it to this point?
While I have no data to back this statement up, anecdotally, I can tell you that the more difficult of a time you had throughout all of your PT courses – the bigger and more ongoing your academic struggle was – the longer you’ll need to take to prepare for the NPTE.
I saw this play out within my cohort to an absolute “T”. I was also told this information firsthand from nearly every one of my professors throughout my time in school. I am a big believer that there is a directly correlation between how much of an academic grind it was for you to get through PT school and how much time you should allow yourself to prepare for the NPTE.
So, if you barely scraped by for a number of your courses (especially if any of them were in orthopedics, neuro-based courses or cardiopulmonary courses), you had better start giving some serious thought to making your NPTE preparation timelines extend beyond the eight-week mark.
How much to extend beyond the eight-week mark will depend on other factors, and is ultimately up to you. When in doubt, err on the longer side, especially if you really struggled in any of your courses.
The bottom line: The longer and more pronounced your academic struggle was throughout PT school, the greater amount of time you will need to give yourself when preparing for the NPTE.
How confident are you in your Musculoskeletal, Neurological & Cardiopulmonary PT knowledge?
In case you’re not aware, the biggest three components of the exam from which the NPTE exam questions will come from are from the muskculoskeletal, neurological and cardiopulmonary categories.
This means that you need to be an absolute rockstar with your PT knowledge for all three of these categories if you are to have any hope for passing the exam. This is a non-negotiable, and if you struggled with any of these categories or their respective courses, consider adding some extra weeks onto your study calendar.
These three categories typically comprise the greatest amount of study time for PT students when preparing for the NPTE due to the fact that they comprise over half of the exam’s questions and there is an absolute plethora of material to know and study for these categories.
The bottom line: MSK, Neuro & CP are the three biggest topics on the NPTE and you need to be an absolute master of all three to pass the exam. The weaker you are in any of these three categories, the more time you’ll need to give yourself to prepare for the exam.
What is your external school environment life going to be like for the next few months?
Another critical factor to consider when determining how far out in advance you should begin preparing for the NPTE is what your life outside of school will be looking like leading up to the exam.
Some students will have a wide open schedule, while others will be working various jobs or even still performing clinical rotations (this is also the case if you attempt to or plan on writing your board exams early).
It’s very important to have an idea of how busy you will be with non-studying pursuits leading up the exam since it will determine how much time you can devote each day and each week towards studying for all aspects of the NPTE content.
As you can imagine, the busier your schedule is, the more time you should give yourself for preparing for the exam. Some students are able to study for four or more hours a day since their schedule permits it. Just make sure that if you DO have the available time that you can keep your study sessions productive – not everyone can study effectively for multiple hours a day for days on end.
The bottom line: The amount of time you are able to devote to studying and preparing for the NPTE can be largely dictated by your non-academic schedule, so you will need to plan accordingly. Many students don’t factor this in to their initial study plans and wind up getting less studying done as a result than what they had intended. The better you know what your schedule will be like, the more accurately you can predict how long you will need to prepare for the NPTE.
Concluding remarks
Once you start to gain a clear picture as to when you’ll need to begin studying for the NPTE, your next step will be coming up with a specific study plan. However, you can’t create a study calendar until you clearly know how much time you will need for the study process.
To determine how far out in advance you should begin preparing for the NPTE, ask yourself how much difficulty you experienced with the academic material presented to you in PT school. The more difficulty you had, the more time you’ll need to give yourself.
As well, if you feel that any of your weak categories of knowledge lay within musculoskeletal, neurological or cardiopulmonary PT, you definitely need to extend your study time beyond any standard timeframe of eight weeks.
Lastly, ask yourself what your daily and weekly schedule will look like in the weeks and months leading up to the date of the exam. A busier and more demanding schedule will likely force your hand at lengthening your study time in order to ensure you strengthen all content areas of the exam.
Give the NPTE the respect it deserves when it comes to preparing for it. It’s by no means the world’s hardest exam, but it will for sure knock you over if you don’t respect the volume of material that it comprises.
Come up with a good study timeline and a good study plan and you’ll pass this thing. If other students have done it, so can you.
Grind hard. You got this.
Related articles
- Ten Critical Tips when Preparing to Study for the NPTE Board Exam
- Preparing for the NPTE: Why Practice Exams are Your Best Friend
- How PT Students Can Recover From Failing the NPTE Board Exam
Hi! I’m Jim Wittstrom, PT, DPT, CSCS, Pn1.
I am a physical therapist who is passionate about all things pertaining to strength & conditioning, human movement, injury prevention and rehabilitation. I created StrengthResurgence.com in order to help others become stronger and healthier. I also love helping aspiring students and therapists fulfill their dreams of becoming successful in school and within their clinical PT practice. Thanks for checking out my site!