If you're not already on Pocket Prep, definitely highly recommend this study tool. It's my favorite for a few different reasons.
It is super customizable, so you can pick what domains you want questions on, how many you want, if you want to do time-based, maybe you just want to do the quick 10 because you don't have that much time. It just gives you a really customizable experience, super user-friendly, and the explanations that they give are really, really great.
The Jean Inman has a lot of questions on it, but a lot of the time, I find my students are kind of wasting time looking for the explanations. So Pocket Prep is really, really great because it has so many of the explanations. I personally used it when I was studying, and I always like to recommend it to my students.
The practice question tests on here are really great because it just gives you exposure to more questions. To help give you the best review of the Mock Exams I did take first exam in there because I wanted to see what it's like. Before I did this I also had a lot of students who are worried because they had taken the Mo Exam and their scores were a lot worse then the regular questions.
The community average for the exam number one (when I took it) on Pocket Prep is about a 53 percent. So just know that going in and don't worry if your exam score is lower than you've been scoring other places.
So the first thing is, I really like that they have it on the computer. I highly recommend you take this on the computer. Please don't take this on your phone. It's going to be too long. But I really like that they have it on the computer. And before you even get started, they are going to kind of give you reminders, like take it on the computer, take it in test taking, take it in test taking conditions, just to kind of get you in the mind space of the exam. And you guys know from, if you've watched my RD exam prep class, that any time you're doing a practice question set, and I like my students to do a minimum of 50 questions in their practice question sets, in test taking conditions. It is difficult for me as your tutor to give you recommendations of how to fix your exam score if when you take a practice test you have a lot of distractions as we don't know if it was the environment or the questions. I want you to take all of your practice question sets, all your practice exams, and test taking conditions so that we can get the best data possible.
When you actually start the exam, it is a very similar layout as just any regular Pocket Prep question set that you've done before. One of the things that I didn't like about it is it doesn't mimic how in the exam you are not allowed to go back in the exam. When you click an answer and submit the question, you can't go back. But in the Pocket Prep exam, you can go back. So I would recommend for my students who are taking this, try not to do that. I know it's going to be tempting. And it was funny because even when I was taking the exam, I was so tempted to go back and be like, did I read that one properly? Do I want to change it? Or if I remembered something down the line, I really want to go back. But do not go back because you're doing yourself a disservice because you want to lock in your answer and commit to it when you put the next one.
The feature that I do recommend that you use that they have is the flagging. So make sure as you're going through the questions, put a flag on a question that you were confused on or that you think you got wrong, because when you get the score report, you can see which ones you flagged and it's really great to go back. You also, with the test, want to make sure you're using scrap paper, because you want to make sure you're doing all your math out. You guys know from my math classes, keep your units tight, get it right. So you want to be doing all your math out. And remember, on the exam, you're not going to have a little scientific calculator. I always use my scientific calculator when I'm teaching, but you don't have that on the exam. So if you don't have a basic calculator, be sure to grab the calculator off your phone. And don't forget to put your phone on do not disturb, because remember, we're in test taking mode. So definitely use your scrap piece of paper, because when you go and review your answers, you want to kind of be able to look back and say like, what was my math or what was my thinking here? And without the scrap piece of paper, it's easy that by the time you go back to look over the exam, especially if you don't necessarily have time in that moment, you're going to kind of forget. So make sure you're using the scrap piece of paper.
You also want to make sure that you're reading the questions out loud. Now, I know you can't do this in your actual exam, but I want to encourage you to do it in your practice, especially if you're someone who rushes or someone who tends to miss the wording or kind of is confused by the time you get to the question portion of the paragraph. So reading it out loud is just a great way to kind of slow down, especially because this practice exam, the first one that I did, so it was the Pocket Prep practice one, it is 145 questions, which is really, really long. If you're noticing, like you're kind of starting to lose focus, reading the question out loud is a great, great, great way to make sure you're staying focused throughout the exam. Otherwise, our eyes tend to start to skim.
About halfway on the exam it was stopped and a timer that pops up and it says exams pause, you can take a 10-minute break. Especially for you guys who haven't taken the exam yet, I want to remind you, you do not get breaks in the exam. There's no pause in that 3 hours. If you need to take a break or you do want to go to the bathroom, you can, but it's going to eat at your time. With the change to 3 hours you do now have time for a quick break. I recommend taking it as your desk. When I was taking this one, I did take a little stretch break and kind of switched around my position, but I definitely didn't take a 10 minute break. So if you want to take breaks throughout, you definitely can, but make sure that you're doing that on all your practice exams, because I really want you to mimic how is it to sit at your desk for so long.
Now, when you finish the exam, it gives you a report very, very similar to how it normally does. So you have your community average, it'll show you your score, it'll show you the correctly answered question, your average time per question. Remember, we want to go for an average of about a question per minute. So especially if your exam score is lower than you thought it was, and you are like, wow, I'm so surprised. And then you're looking at your average time per question, and you're noticing it's like 23 seconds, right? That's a good reminder to kind of slow down. It'll show you how long it took you to do the exam. Then it will show you your breakdown by your different domains, how many questions you got wrong in each domain, how was your subject score. And you definitely want to pay attention to this, right? It's good to kind of know your domain breakdown. But remember, when you're going through and looking at all your questions, you also want to keep an eye out for what I call your trouble areas, which are smaller topics, right? Not domains, but topics that you're getting more than two questions wrong on.
After your subject insights, then you can scroll down and they have all of the questions, but then you can look at the flagged questions as well. So as I mentioned, make sure you're looking at the flagged questions and taking advantage of that during the test, because the ones you flag should be the ones that you're like, oof, I don't think I'm going to get this one right. Because some of those flagged questions you are going to get right, but keeping them as flagged questions is going to remind you like, oh yeah, I guessed on that one.
Then it will of course show you your correct and incorrect questions too. But overall, I'm really, really excited that Pocket Prep had these three practice exams. I think they're a really, really great tool. Where I would put them in your studying is, I wouldn't hesitate to take one early on in your studying. This is a great baseline for you to take, but I would definitely save the other two to a little bit later in your studying. Because if you're kind of blowing through all your practice questions right away, you're not going to really be taking the full advantage of them.
So I would take one maybe, you know, in the beginning of your studying and then wait till you've made a good amount of the way through the material to take the second. And then the third one, you could always take it like a week out from your exam because you always want to make sure you're giving yourself enough time to kind of utilize these data points you're getting. As for "goal" score I would say you want to make sure your score is increasing from that baseline score each time you take a practice exam. Most of my students are getting above the community average ~65-70% before their exams. If you need help getting your practice question score up check out the Situational Practice Question Bundle or join a group tutoring class.
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