“I think I know enough.”
So many people go into the NPTE exam thinking that. But how often does that feeling lead to a passing grade?
If you’re anything like Dr. Kyle Rice — aka Coach K — the answer is never. After spending months drilling down on everything he thought he needed to know to get the NPTE passed, he’d get down to two answers, and he’d make the wrong choice every time.
He didn’t know what the questions were really asking, or what the test wanted from him. And that’s when Coach K realized something: He wasn’t having a knowledge problem; He was having a test-taking problem.
Strategy is as important as knowledge
When you’re trying to figure out how to pass the NPTE in one shot, knowledge isn’t enough. You need to be able to convert your knowledge into the right answers. And that requires a strategy you can use with every single NPTE question.
For Coach K, developing that strategy took a very long time. He studied for 14 months, read 5 NPTE books and took countless practice exams. Then, he walked into the NPTE exam and got a perfect score — after failing every other standardized test he’d ever taken. And he did it using four checkpoints.
4 checkpoints for answering every NPTE question right
Every question on the NPTE exam has a start (the question) and an end (your answer). Each question can end four ways: in one of three incorrect answers OR in one correct answer. At each of Coach K’s checkpoints, you eliminate answers until you’re left with just one correct answer.
Checkpoint #1: Understand the question
“I don’t understand what this question is asking.” How many times have you had that thought while answering NPTE questions?
If you don’t understand the question, you have, at most, a 25% chance of getting the question right. Any program that’s going to successfully teach you how to pass the NPTE must give you a concrete way to interpret questions so that you get reproducible results.
Caption: Want to watch Coach K’s whole checkpoint talk? Click on over to Facebook.
Checkpoint #2: Clarity of answers
When you’re working through a question on the NPTE exam, do you look down and skim the answer choices quickly to see if the “right” answer jumps out at you? So many of us do! Your first instinct is the best instinct, right? Well, not in situations where strategy is as important as knowledge.
Before you zero in on an answer, you have to be clear about all of your answer choices. You need a way to understand what the answer choices are and why they’re there. Once you know how to do that, you can clear checkpoint #2 and increase your chance of finding the right answer to 50%.
Checkpoint #3: Find the breadcrumbs
The NPTE is set up for you to win: True or false?
Believe it or not — and Coach K didn’t at first — the answer is true. Standardized tests actually have hints inside each question that are intended to guide you to the right answer; you just haven’t seen those hints because you don’t know what to look for!
If you can understand the question, you can identify the pattern. And the pattern isn’t that complicated. But if you don’t have the tools to identify those breadcrumbs, you’re going to stay at that 50% chance of getting the question right.
Put another way: If you’re the person who always gets a question down to two answers and thinks, “but both of these answers could be right,” this is the checkpoint you’re not passing.
Checkpoint #4: Support
Passing checkpoint #4 is the most important — and, really, the easiest — step in our process for teaching you how to pass the NPTE. There are multiple breadcrumbs in each question. And some breadcrumbs will lead you toward the wrong answer! BUT if you add all the breadcrumbs together, they will point you to the right answer.
What you need is for someone to show you how to identify and categorize those breadcrumbs. Once you’re able to do that, you can pass checkpoint #4 and reach the all-important 100% chance of getting the question correct. And that, friends, is the kind of math you need when you’re learning how to pass the NPTE in one shot.
Get the key to all 4 checkpoints with the NPTE Pass System
If you’re an action-taker whose biggest problem is finding a strategy that works for standardized tests, the NPTE Pass System is probably what you’re looking for. The test-taking strategy course is specifically designed to boost your score by focusing solely on the NPTE test-taking component. In 4-6 weeks, you can increase your score by 10-50%.
