 Let's talk about the day of your board exam, how I think you should prepare an hour before, but then also how you should write your board exam in a very strategic way so you don't skip any questions by mistake and you don't spend too long on one question. But what I want to talk about first is leading up to the board exam a little bit. So people always ask me, like, Andrea, how long should I study before the board exam? Should it be two weeks? Should it be three months? Should it be a full year? So I offer a course, the VIP Board Exam Prep Academy, and that's a full one-year access. I do that because I feel students are starting to think about the board exam well before they're even going to take the board exam. So I offer a year access in case somebody wants to get started a little bit early. But I do recommend at least three months of studying before the board exam, six months is even better, simply because three months leading up to the board exam maybe something's going to happen. You never know. Life happens such as you could become really, really sick and your bed ridden for two weeks. So that's almost a month wasted or maybe something happens within your family where you're traveling back and forth if you're not living with your family and there's an emergency situation or what if you want to take time to travel for a week because it happens to be summertime. So all in all I say three to six months studying before the board exam is perfect if you can do it sooner than that even better. But if you're waiting two weeks before the board exam I don't recommend that because you can't go through everything you need to in a couple weeks time. And then how long should you be studying per day? I suggest six hours a day maximum, one to two hours a day minimum depending if you have a full-time job or not. Definitely check out the rest of my videos on YouTube where I go more in depth of how long to study and what type of studying you should do since this video is mainly just for the board exam and the day of. So the day of the board exam what I suggest students do is you should have a piece of paper or maybe an album in your phone with perhaps screenshots of certain topics you want to quickly review an hour before the board exam. I feel this really, really helps. Let's say you want to review the most common pharmacology drugs because you're a dental hygiene student. Well if you quickly look at that an hour before you take the board exam then it will stick in your mind even more. What about for dental assisting students? Maybe you want to review the most common instruments or maybe the root canal procedure is a little bit harder for you so you want to review that before you take the board exam. That is going to stick in your mind and if they ask a question like that on the board exam it will be as fresh in your mind as possible. But don't just go over one topic go over several topics as many as you can an hour before you take the board exam. What I don't suggest is waking up at 4am to study four hours before the board exam. You will be too tired and you'll be too stressed out I do not recommend doing this. But you should study a good couple weeks before the board exam. Think of it as if ok this is my last time to study I'm going to do whatever I can. Don't leave it all up until the day before and then study for like 24 hours straight. You're going to be tired, you're going to be stressed and you're going to be exhausted. But what about when you're sitting in front of that computer writing the board exam? What do I suggest doing? First of all make sure to answer all questions. Do not leave any questions blank even if you don't know the answer at all. Just pick one because if you don't pick an answer that's a zero that's an automatic zero and who wants that right? But what I suggest doing and of course these are all just suggestions do whatever you feel is best for you. So what I suggest doing is going through the entire exam answering the questions promptly. Don't spend 10 minutes on one question because it's really really hard for you thinking like oh my god this isn't possible. But I'm also not suggesting going through it as quickly as possible either. Read the question, understand it, answer it and then move on. Read the next question. Understand it, think about it if you have to and then move on. But I don't want you to be looking at a question and then being like I have no idea what this is. Oh let me think about this for five minutes. It's just going to stress you out more and you could run out of time. So do the best you can to answer your questions within a couple minutes each question or less. And remember you can always go back and change your answer if you want and that brings me to my next point. Should you be changing your answers? In school they probably told you no, go with your gut. Your gut is usually right but I disagree a little bit with that. Don't change your answer unless you know for sure it's the wrong one. Meaning go with your gut instinct for that question. You know go with your gut for that answer. But then let's say a couple questions down the line or maybe on the next page. You come across a question that makes you think of that other question like oh, this is talking about pharmacology and this drug and this drug. Whereas that last question, you know I didn't understand what drug they were talking about. But now seeing this question I get it and I understand the question more. Then go back and change your answer to the one you know is correct. Does that make sense? But don't go back to those harder questions and then go oh, I picked this one at first. No, I think I'm going to pick this one. No, I think I'm going to pick this one. You see how there's no logic to that? You're just basically picking whatever you think. Go with your gut unless you know or you think you know that that other answer is correct. But ultimately I want you guys to go with your gut. Does that make sense? Okay, so then go through all of the questions within a couple minutes. You can always go back again. Now a lot of people ask me Andrea, should I go back to let's say page number one, question number one, go through the questions again, read them again and then give it another shot. You know if you have time. If you have time still allotted for that exam and that's a tricky one for me to answer. I want to say no, don't bother doing that because then you're just thinking about it more and you're more apt to change your answer. But what if you going back, you think of the answer or question in a certain way and you want to change the answer because now you think you know the right one, then that is a good idea. And it might also help to go back again to make sure you didn't miss any of the questions. Make sure to answer all questions that's extremely important. If you have time left at the end of the exam and you answered everything, then it's up to you. Would you feel better to go back to look at the questions again or are you done? Are you exhausted and you just want to finish? That is up to you. So I hope this helps you guys. I hope that helps kind of come up with a plan before you take the board exam and then the day of the board exam to help you kind of think, okay, what should I be doing? What should I strategically, strategist, oh my God blooper. Anyway, this is live unedited you guys, but you know what I'm trying to say. Strategically. Oh, I think I said it. Okay. So how do you want to go about that exam? So I do hope this helped a lot, you guys. Good luck. Let me know if any questions, if you're not part of the VIP Board Exam Prep Academy yet, I'm going to leave the link for you down below. I highly recommend it. The best tutoring program out there, if I do say so myself, I tutor full time. I am here to support you and this is for dental hygiene students and then there's a separate course for dental assisting students as well. You have full access for one year. So let me know if you guys need anything. Thank you for watching. Click like, thumbs up if you like this video and I'll see you guys in the next one.