The internet seems to be full of PT students and PT graduates trying to determine which organization out there offers the “best” practice NPTE exams (or CPE practice exams if in Canada) to take in preparation for the real deal NPTE itself. It’s very understandable that students want exams that will be as accurate to the NPTE or CPE as possible, and while in my experience some are indeed more accurate than others, you can benefit from ANY reputable exam company’s practice exams.

Keep in mind that I have written the NPTE (American National Board Exam) as well as the PCE (the written component of the Canadian National Board Exams). For this article, however, I will be focusing largely on the NPTE for US students. The good news is that NPTE practice exams are still very beneficial for Canadian students, although there are few categories that are not relevant (Medicare rules and laws, etc).

I will cover my thoughts on different NPTE exam companies within this article, but before I do, there are some additional points I want to touch on first.

The quick takeaway for this article:

• Students should understand the benefits of taking practice exams and weigh them to the risks of not taking them. It’s your call, but know that there are serious benefits to practice exams and some major risks to not taking any.
  

• Practice examswill very accurately let you know whether you’re ready or not to write the NPTE, and writing the NPTE when you’re not ready is a bad situation for a number of reasons.
  

• The best practice exams to take are whichever ones you can get your hands on. While YOU may find some to be better than others, more accurate or more realistic than others, you can always benefit from any practice exam you take. The more you can take, the better. No harm comes from taking more exams. Maybe a bit of a dent to the wallet perhaps, but it can easily be justified if you don’t feel confident or ready to write the actual NPTE exam.

• I have written practice exams from MULTIPLE companies. All were extremely beneficial, but if there were only ONE that I could pick, it would be the PEAT practice exams.

I will elaborate on all these points below, so keep reading!

Knowing the benefits of taking practice exams and what the risks are of not taking any of them

I personally feel that the benefits of taking extra practice exams far outweigh the risks of not taking practice exams. What it ultimately comes down to though is knowing the outcomes of what happens (and if you’re ok with that) if you don’t pass the exam on your first attempt. If you know the answers to that scenario, and you’re ok with what may result within that scenario, then you might not feel the need to do many (or any) practice exams, and that’s just fine.

Everyone’s situation will be different, of course, so this is by no means a universal thing; we had a few students in my cohort who could have smoked the NPTE after writing just one or maybe no practice exams. But, both of those students also had 4.0 GPAs by the time the NPTE came around. My GPA was high, but it wasn’t a 4.0.

Most people, therefore (such as myself) are willing to pay some money and invest time and energy into taking practice exams in the name of gaining both knowledge and confidence for the NPTE. I did pretty well throughout PT school, but I wanted all the confidence I could get. I just felt there was too much on the line to mess this thing up.

This leads me to my next point:

Yes, practice exams cost a bit of money, but they can be a cheap insurance policy for not failing the actual $500 NPTE exam and being set back another three months.

It’s interesting for me to hear students talk about not wanting to pay for practice exams. That’s very understandable, especialy when you’re doing PT school in the US, where a DPT education costs around 100k.

But, the actual NPTE exam costs around $500 or so to register, and if you fail that, there’s a few major financial pains that result:

The first is that you’ll now need to spend another $500 to re-register in order to write it again while also paying another $85 or so to reserve a seat again at a Prometric test center.

The second is that since the NPTE is only offered every three months, this can be a three-month delay from not getting your license and beginning to get income as a result. A three-month delay in income (if you already have a job lined up)!

Yes, you can get a temporary three-month lisence once you graduate from your institution, BUT if you fail your NPTE exam on the first attempt, that temporary lisence is then revoked, meaning you can no longer be paid for PT services since you don’t have any lisence.

In my opinion, that all is a HEFTY price to pay (figuratively AND literally) for not wanting to spend a fraction of that re-examination money or lost-income money on additional practice exams, which could have maximized your chances of passing just that much more.

Practice exams will flat-out let you know whether or not you’re ready to write the actual exam

The only way to know for sure that you’re ready to take the board exam is to have passed a practice exam – but, just because you passed one isn’t a guarantee that you’ll still pass the real real.

Most board prep companies, such as Scorebuilders, recommend that you pass at least three practice exams, and preferably all in a row. AND, if at all possible, with at least one of those exams coming from a different company than what you likely took your two others from.

It all comes down to some pretty clear statistics; students who can’t consistently pass practice exams have a hard time passing the actual board exam. It’s an unfortunate reality, but the practice exams therefore serve as a great indicator as to whether or not you’re legitimately ready to write the actual exam.

Taking practice exams helps you identify reoccurring trends, common themes and patterns that are likely to show up on the NPTE

If you were preparing to go into battle against an enemy, or maybe as a sports athlete preparing for a big game against your rival, you would likely find yourself doing all that you could to study them and learn their tactics and their philosophies.

It would be prudent of you to take the same approach when preparing to write the NPTE; knowing not just what they like to test you on but HOW they like to test you is important. And, you only learn these things by taking practice exams, which are designed to replicate the NPTE as best as possible.

The more practice exams you take, the more clearly these trends and patterns present themselves and become obvious to you. Study the enemy so that you know how it wants to attack you and so that you won’t be caught off guard.

Taking practice exams also helps you clearly understand your weak points and what you still need to work on

Most of the big practice exam companies are able to provide you with statistical feedback on your strengths and weaknesses according to categories such as clinical decision making, ethics, safety equipment, as well as individual subjects such as musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiopulmonary and so on.

This feedback can be incredibly helpful for knowing which areas you seem to have on lockdown and which areas still require work. If you take a few practice exams and consistently kill one category, you can feel confident that you can now free up some study time to focus more on any consistently weak areas you’ve identified.

How many practice exams should you take?

According to Scorebuilders, the average student takes between 5 to 9 practice exams before the real deal. When I first heard this during our weekend-long on-campus Scorebuilders NPTE prep course, I laughed because that sounded absolutely ridiculously unnecessary. Two or maybe even three? Sure. Nine? Yeah right.

So, how many practice exams did I ultimately wind up taking?…Nine.
How many practice exams should YOU take? It totally depends.

I don’t think I necessarily needed to take nine exams, but it’s a very good feeling when your score jumps a bit with each successive exam that you take. Passing 8 of my 9 practice exams gave me some serious psychological armour to dawn when heading into the real exam.

I took practice exams from different companies, which I’ll elaborate on a bit later in the post, and while I took exams from different companies, common themes always emerged and reviewing each exam allowed me to continually improve upon deficiencies each and every time.

The REASONS for taking multiple practice exams can vary from individual to individual.

For me, it wasn’t because I didn’t have confidence or that my scores weren’t acceptable (aside from the very first practice exam I took). It was because I was out for blood on the NPTE. To me, the NPTE was everything that had stood in my way all these years of me ultimately becoming a board-certified PT.

Therefore, I implemented a scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners approach when it came to studying for and writing this thing. I wanted to know that I could go into the Prometric testing center on the worst day of my life, half-conscious and barely breathing and still pass this thing.

Ok, so maybe that’s a bit of extreme in my wording, but honestly not by all that much. As a result, my confidence increased with every exam and my scores got almost always got better with each exam that I took (replicated under as exact of realistic testing conditions as possible).

By the time I took my final practice exam, I was scoring over 80% with a half-hour of time to spare on the exam (I am a SLOOOW test taker, so this was big for me).

When all was said and done, I was academically cleared by my school to write the NPTE in April and smoked the exam with a great score.
Could I have passed with only taking a couple of practice exams? Maybe, but for me, there was just too much on the line to be walking into the Prometric test center without supreme confidence.

Use practice exams in order to Learn the pace you need to move at for the real thing

If you’re not the fastest taker in the world (such as myself), then you’ll want to use your practice exams to help you learn the appropriate paces that you can afford to work through. While time isn’t an issue for most students writing their board exam, the last thing you want is to have to rifle through the final section or so of your exam because you’re severely pressed for time.

Practice exams help you to find the pace you need to work at and as a result can give you tons of added confidence while saving you from missing a bunch of questions because you didn’t have enough time to closely read the question or critically think about the correct answer.

Practice exams will help you with building up mental stamina

One of the most valuable aspects of taking practice exams is that not only do they help you make sure that you can move through the exam at an appropriate pace, but they also help you build up your mental stamina/endurance that’s required for the four-plus hours of mental focus and effort that is required.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to have to answer 250 questions in one general sitting. Most practice exams are 200 questions and even this can be tough to get through without getting mentally sloppy and fatigued. As you know, you cannot afford to get mentally sloppy or fatigued on your national board exam.

Just like increasing physical stamina, you can do the same with mental stamina. Practice exams help you get accustomed to the grind of being able to produce and keep high mental output for hours on end.

Use each and every practice exam as a guidepost to track and measure your overall improvements

One of the principles behind taking multiple practice exams, aside from becoming highly familiar with your strengths and weaknesses, is in regards to ensuring progress is being made.

If progress isn’t evident with each subsequent practice exam (assuming your scores are below passing or just right on the cost), aside from it telling you that you’re likely not ready or the actual exam, it’s also valuable feedback that your studying/review plan, for one reason or another, isn’t very effective.

Therefore, it’s important to realize that each exam should serve as a guidepost or benchmark for the continual improvements that you’re expecting to see with each exam.

Just make sure that you’re giving enough time between each practice exam to learn and memorize new material, otherwise you might not see improvements on each subsequent exam, even if you’re doing everything else right.

If I could only recommend one organization’s practice board exam, it would be the PEAT exam

I don’t want you to think that there’s only one good organization out there who writes “the best” practice exams. As I mentioned earlier, you can benefit from any practice exam you can take. I do believe that some (for me) were a bit better than others in terms of the questions they asked, but they all did a decent job overall.

However, if there WERE only one, I’d recommend the PEAT practice exams.
The PEAT exam (Practice Exam & Assessment Tool) is developed by the FSBT (Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy) This is the same organization that develops the actual NPTE exam each and every year.
When you purchase the PEAT ($99 USD), you get two exams, one of which is an actual retired NPTE board exam from a previous year.

Why I found the PEAT to be the best:

• Highest degree of certainty that exam questions are written in the same style as the actual NPTE since it’s written by the FSBPT themselves
• Computer based that displays the exact same testing screen you will see when you write the NPTE at your Prometric testing center
• Immediate scoring and feedback/analysis as soon as you complete the exam (other companies have this as well though)
• Two exams for $99 USD is on par with costs of other exams from other companies

For more information on the PEAT, feel free to click this link to the FSBT’s website regarding the PEAT.

If you take practice exams from multiple organizations, I would recommend to save your PEAT exams for last.

Closing remarks

The NPTE or the PCE (for us Canadian PT students) can be a daunting and seemingly formidable obstacle to take on. The key is to do what you’ve hopefully don’t all throughout PT school up until this point: Give yourself plenty of time to study, have a system in place and routinely find ways to monitor and measure progress.

Once you see progress occurring from one practice exam to the next, you’ll start to build some psychological Armor that will serve you well in your study days ahead leading up to the final battle on exam day.

And when that day comes, you’ll feel confident walking into your Prometric testing center knowing that you’re prepared for battle with the dragon that stands between you and your ability to be a credentialed and licensed Physical Therapist. This is the last thing that stands in the way between you and seven-years of schooling.

If you found this post helpful and you’re wanting to get more great insight on how you can slay the NPTE or PCE board exam, be sure to check out my article Ten Critical Tips when Preparing to Study for the NPTE Board Exam.

Use practice exams to your advantage. Learn from them, keep on studying and go slay the dragon!

Grind hard. You got this.