If you have recently received your board exam results and have been notified that you did not pass, know that you are not alone. Throughout every year, each cycle of brings failure to many hopeful PT students hoping to receive their license.

The first thing that I would encourage you to keep in mind as you read this article is that many other students have fought their way back from this particular defeat, and you can too. How one chooses to do so may be different from one student another, but having an idea of some general steps to consider can be particularly helpful for students during this season of their academic career.

If you’re a DPT student within the US, remember that you’ve made it 7 years through an academic grind. If you’re a Canadian PT student, you’ve made it through the 6 to 6.5 years of academic grind. You’ve overcome ALL of those years, courses and exams so you most certainly can clear the last hurdle.
As the great Les Brown once quoted during one of his many inspirational speeches, “Walter. P. Chrysler failed in the automotive industry fourty-two times….but my God, look what happened on number fourty-three.”

The quick overview of this article:

Failure is always difficult to deal with, but the absolute worst form of failure is the type in which you don’t learn anything from it as the end result. Every student’s journey and subsequent steps they take after failing the board exam can be quite different, depending on how they are feeling, but for those who are looking to have another crack at taking (and defeating) the board exam, there are some general steps that may be helpful for getting back into a healthy state of mind.

The following steps are strong recommendations that I make to you as you read this. But, by no means is it how you MUST go about things; if I say something within this article that you like, take it and run with it. If you feel like one of these tips or steps isn’t for you, just let it go and move onto the next one.

Step 1: Give yourself some time to simply process everything before planning your next step(s)

Step 2: Order performance feedback results from the FSBPT

Step 3: Determine from the score report if the results from each category add up with how you felt before you wrote the exam

Step 4: Find the right people in your life that you can confide in and receive encouragement and support from. Remember, you don’t have to tell everyone

Step 5: Deciding when you’ll get back on the study train

Step 6: Determine how you’ll need to tweak and change your study approach

The first thing to do: Give yourself some time to simply process everything before planning your next step(s)

Having worked incredibly hard only to come up short at this point in the game can be an incredibly emotional experience. This is very understandable and something I would never try to minimize or downplay for a PT student who has poured their heart and soul into their studies yet came up short on their board exam.

While you will need to re-group yourself and plan for what the next steps may look like, my contention would be that now may not likely be the time for this. Assuming you plan on writing the NPTE or the PCE again, you have three whole months to go before the next exam attempt. If it’s the PCE for obtaining restricted Canadian licensing, you’ll have another six months or so.

Yes, you may need a decent amount of time to double-down on your study efforts for the next exam, but diving back into it immediately without taking some time to just process how you’re feeling and give yourself a bit of mental reprieve from the stressors of studying may not be in your best interests.

Think of athletes or a sports team that made it to the championship game but then lost to their opponent(s). It’s heartbreaking and the athletes or sports team knows they will need to work hard in the off-season before embarking on being victorious next season, but they will still take some time off (weeks, or a month, etc.) before slowly getting back into their off-season training.

They do this not just to give their bodies a break, but their minds as well. The mind can easily become fatigued from prolonged intensive effort and stress, just like muscles and the nervous system can become fatigued with prolonged physical activities and stressors.

Maybe it’s worth looking at your current situation in the same light; you lost the championship game, so you’ll have to have a crack at it “next season” but for now, some rest and a different focus for a bit of time might just be what your mind, body and spirit all need.

The Second Step: Order performance-feedback results of your exam from the FSBPT

One of the options that students have if they have failed the exam is to order a report from the FSBPT for providing a breakdown of how they scored within each category on the exam.

You should actually perform this step before following through on step one (i.e. taking a step back from things and taking some time off). The performance-feedback post exam is only available for a certain extent of time, so it would be wise to make sure you have your copy ordered. Thereafter, you could fully take some time off, knowing that you’ve got your access to the breakdown report when you decide to get back into things.

Ordering a feedback report costs a bit of money, which is a bummer, but simply makes sense to do unless you find yourself in extreme financial hardship. It essentially serves as a blueprint as to what needs to be improved upon in terms of clinical knowledge and academic knowledge in order to pass the exam.

It’s really hard to fine tune your next round of studying if you don’t know the specific areas that you scored poorly on or how poorly (or not-so poorly) you may have done. Having an even understanding of which areas you need to go back to and strengthen will also give you a decent amount of peace of mind. Spending lots of time on areas that you may not necessarily need to study is likely time that will be wasted that could have been put to use studying other areas. But you likely won’t know what these areas are unless you order your feedback report.

The Third Step: Determine from the FSBPT score report if the results from each category add up with how you felt before you wrote the exam

Once you’ve taken some time to go over the performance results of your exam, ask yourself if the results seem to line up with your own assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

As an example:

If the report shows that you scored low within the neuro category, and you feel like this is indeed a weak point for you (and that you felt this way heading into the exam), then that’s a good indicator that your neuro knowledge and competency needs improvement. If your personal assessment of your knowledge is in line with what the report states, then the process now becomes a bit more simple: Find a way to improve your knowledge within this category before your next board attempt.

But, if you generally feel that you’re quite competent and confident with your neuro anatomy, then maybe ask yourself what could have caused you to score low for a category you otherwise feel you’re strong within. Was there any test anxiety? Did you find the wording of the questions to be confusing in any sort of way? Did you feel pressured for time?

These aforementioned questions are not the only questions to ask yourself, but hopefully highlight the need to begin to explore potential reasons as to why you scored low for each respective category on your performance feedback. You need to try your best to figure out why your score report doesn’t “add up” with how you feel knowledge-wise with that category. Once you feel you have a good understanding as to why, then you can explore how to make the necessary corrections for the next exam (ex. working on reducing test anxiety, remembering to read the questions more carefully, and so on).

The fourth step: Remember, you don’t have to tell everyone about your exam results. Find the right people in your life that you can confide in and receive encouragement and support from if you fee you need it

One of the toughest things I’ve heard students talk about when it comes to failing the board exam is having to let their family, peers and others know that they didn’t pass. Sometimes the student can feel ashamed, embarrassed or even feel like they let others down.

Remember that you don’t need to elaborate and share details with everyone; you can simply tell people that you didn’t get the results that you were hoping for and simply leave it at that.

Hopefully you do have one or a few key individuals within your life whom you can share more details with. It can really help out to confide in someone who you know will understand and show care and support as a result. Even if it’s simply just to vent and express your frustration. Keeping emotions bottled up for a prolonged period of time might give you a greater sense of stress. Everyone will be different, however. Just ask yourself if you feel the need to share any details that you’d like to with someone whom you’d confide in.

The fifth step: Deciding when you’ll get back on the study train

There will come a point sometime after going through some time off from studying in which point you’ll need to start thinking about studying again.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to actually start studying again at this point in time, rather that you simply need to ponder at what point it will be ideal for you to start getting back to the study process (this time much more refined and confidence-boosting since you know what you need to work on more and what you need to work on less).

You’ll need another study plan, but you since you’ve taken some time to perform a needs analysis (which you did by looking over your FSBPT feedback report) and a retrospective analysis, you’ll be able to make some efficient tweaks, which leads us into the final step…

Step 6: Determine how you’ll need to tweak and change your study approach for the next board exam

Study plan 1.0 is now getting upgraded to version 2.0, and this version has the bugs worked out. It takes what was great with version 1.0 and builds upon it while removing what didn’t work so well and replacing it with what was missing. Now, study plan 2.0 runs more efficiently since it’s an optimized and improved continuation from a previous generation rather than built from scratch the way 1.0 was.

All analogies aside, the process by which one tweaks and changes their study plan, along with how much they tweak and change it will be different for every student.

Whether you choose to reach out to fellow students for insight or you sign up for prep courses, or just put your nose in the books all the more, you should strive to ensure that the changes you’re making will serve you well while keeping in mind that optimizing study habits is always a process of continual refinement.

There are great resources out there for helping students to pass the NPTE or CPE board exams, and they are quite easy to find with a bit of googling, or through asking your peers or other PT students.

At the end of the day, it comes down to you as to how you choose to refine your studies and which resources you choose to use along the way. As you do this, press onwards in the study grind knowing that this time around you’re a stronger student.

Closing remarks

If you’ve recently received your exam results and they were not what you were hoping for, remember that everyone loves a good comeback story. As you take time off from all things related to studying and board exams, let your mind and spirit be rejuvenated with thoughts of other students who have once stood where you currently stand, but have rallied back and pressed onwards to ultimately pass their board exam on the next attempt.

In other words, if other people before you (and MANY other people at that) have done it, then you absolutely can too. Yes, it takes more effort, finding resources that you feel will provide the assistance that you need, and more perseverance, but it is very, very possible.

Failure can shake one’s confidence, or it can light a fire underneath their butt. My hope to you is that when the time comes for you to begin diving back into your studies that you not let your confidence be swayed in the slightest, rather that you will know that you’re on a solid path as you begin your revamped studies. This time your studies are more refined; you have a better understanding of what you need to focus in on; you’ve dealt with the real exam up close and personally and are learning from your mistakes.

This life is filled with amazing stories of academics who have failed and failed again, but continued to press on, knowing deep down within themselves that it was possible to succeed. Your story can become one of those stories.

Be brave, grind hard and know that it’s possible.