I passed the INBDE on my first try!

[dentaldentdent]

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To tell you the truth, I didn't feel completely prepared going into the exam, and I wished I had more time to study. Leaving the exam, I didn't feel very confident either! There were definitely questions I knew the answers to, but there were also some sections where I felt lost and wasn't sure about the answer. SO don't let that get you down! I don't think you're ever going to feel fully prepared.. So just go into it with confidence in the knowledge you have.

I took my exam on June 1st and 2nd and got my results back exactly two weeks later. I went to dental school overseas, so I'm a foreign-trained dentist. This is what I did to prepare:

1. Mental Dental Videos

• Although a bit outdated, I still think they're a good place to start if you're not ready to invest in a subscription yet.
• The first thing I did was go through the Mental Dental videos on youtube in the order suggested by Booster's 8-week study guide suggests.
• I took my own notes while watching and made diagrams, tables, graphics.. anything to allow me to fully understand the concepts visually (truthfully this was very time consuming).

2. Reviewing with Booster

• After going through all the Mental Dental videos, I used my notes along with Booster's study notes to cross reference everything and review.
• I only went over some of the Booster videos.. while a lot of the content overlapped with Mental Dental, I think Booster's videos are more up to date with current information

3. Practice Questions

• After reviewing, I focused on practice questions.
• I made sure to review any wrong questions in the moment and mark questions I wanted to come back and review again later on.
• I didn't use any Anki decks because I found them hard to keep up with, so I focused on practice questions as my active recall method.

4. Mock Exam

• I made sure to take mock exam at least two weeks before my actual exam as a baseline to see which areas I needed to work on most.
• As reference, I got "Borderline" in 3 sections and "High" in 3 sections, scoring between 68-72%

5. Reviewing Marked Questions

• During the last two weeks I went through all of my marked questions from the mock exam and reviewed practice questions on the subjects I felt least confident in.

Most importantly, I made sure to rest the day before the test. I didn't study at all and just let my brain take a break from so much information and trusted I knew all I needed to know.

Don't bring yourself down, stay confident in the knowledge you have and the work you've put in and you'll be fine!