I PASSED and I am so thankful! Praise the Lord!!
Here is my experience. I hope it helps all of you.
I started off by looking at decks- I became discouraged... I spent like 3 hours just trying to organize them. I found myself reading the decks and forgetting stuff. I needed a book that was organized and in order, so I bought Mosby's and the Board Busters. Board Busters is like the dental decks, but organized and with old exam questions incorporated into the study material. I'm not a good test taker, and this book put all the pieces together for me. I was in the low middle end of my class. Ill be honest to say that I probably studied twice as hard as my classmates. After I went through the entire book ( took me a month) at 4 hours a day, I went through each chapter again and wrote down key points from each chapter... I had about 10 pages of my own notes from each chapter. I then took all of the old released exams... I would immediately look at the correct answer to make sure I didn't confuse things too much. After all of this, I had about 2.5 weeks to go. I went to the coffee shop and pretended it was my "job" to study. I brought my hand written notes from each chapter, boards busters, and the dental decks to the coffee shop for 2.5 weeks ( probably spent about 100 dollars on coffee and donuts).. And went through one subject from my hand written notes, then the dental decks ( just answered the questions on the front and read the important facts on the back of the cards really quick)
For example:
Monday:*
Endo: read 10 page self made note guide from the board busters, do endo dental decks, review board busters section on endo ( total time in hours/ day was 9 hours). Make sure you read the entire book before doing this!
I did this for every section for 2.5 weeks total after the 1 month I took to go through the book carefully.
I then re-reviewed the old exams. There were about 10-15 exact repeat questions and I think it's only fair that all students get these right because they are RELEASED! Also old exams help with trends. Look at 1993-current. Really important. I thought these were about as hard as the actual exam. I was scoring about 72 percent on these AFTER I did board busters, reviewed my own notes from the busters and quickly flipped through the decks.
Ive read a lot of great thing about Mosby's. I got that book too. My problem was I didn't have a good base, so Mosby's was really wordy and confusing for me. I didnt read it, but heard from a friend it was good for pt. Management. Mosby's is hands down the best resource for pt management.
Pharm: downloaded the tufts pharm review from 2007. Great resource. All you need for pharm and nice format with old exam questions. If you read board busters, you'll be fine too. Decks give too much detail in my opinion, but a good way to quiz yourself is to look through the front of the decks after you do Tufts and read Board Busters.
Don't get bogged down with chemical pathways.
Everything else: use the Board Busters. It's actually a good read. I had such a limited knowledge on biomaterials and gold, etc that this was the key for my success.*
I really hope this helps some. Stay strong and focused. You CAN do it. Times like this are when you have to prioritize and just do it.*
Finally, here are the scores my friend got that lead to his failure the first time. He gave me permission to post these. Don't underestimate this exam. It's hard and you need resources. We both got the same grades in school and had about the same DAT scores. The difference was how we studied. Be wise and make a plan.*
318/500. His score was a 74 ( 63.6%)
Endo
28/36*
Pedo/ 37/71
Oral surgery: *32/56
Oral pathology/radiology: 42/56
Pros: 35/61
Operative : 39/57
Pharm: 24/38
Perio: 41/62
Management (41/63)
Case based: 68/100
Here is a link to the ADA web site for stats on what you need to pass. (approx) It also lists average amount of questions per section and topics. Its pretty accurate.
http://www.ada.org/sections/educationAndCareers/pdfs/nbde_technical_report.pdf
