Before I share my experiences, a little about me. I got trained as PT in India and, have been out of field for a while pursuing other interests. I took NPTE July 2015 and got my results yesterday. I passed.
I picked up on a couple of things that might be helpful (specially if you were trained outside of US and more specifically in India) for getting in the right mindset. When I was in PT school the emphasis was always on memorizing stuff. You would write these essay type answers to exam that you would mug up. This is great of recalling stuff but not so good for assessing cases using ICF model and thinking clinically. Thinking clinically is the major difference in the training. Thats the one thing that NPTE psychometrics test. Memorizing information and applying it correctly are two different things and, I would recommend focusing on application.
Now on to some more specific stuff, I brought the Sullivan NPTE book and started going through it 3 weeks before the test. I got very frustrated with the book because the way the information is presented is fragmented. There is no explanation and that does not work for me. I ditched the book (well I mean I just used it to identify topics) and went to textbooks. I focused on Biomechanics (not ortho) and on Anatomy and Physiology (cardio-resp and neuro both). I know that this sounds like a very short time but I was devoting close to 8 hours/day. So instead of focusing on the clinical conditions focus was on fundamentals.
In addition, I would recommend practicing reasoning both inductive and deductive. Sullivan has a neat explanation of this in their book. Read the questions very carefully and, use the fundamental concepts that you should be able to apply not just recall and thinking critically is what will do the trick.
One last thing, the books that I used were Norkins- Biomehcanics, some random book on anatomy and physiology that I found in the library, Sullivan - Physical Rehab, Cameron - electro (although I did not focus much on electro), and the only thing that I found the Sullivan NPTE book useful for was the tests (I took 1 sullivan and 1 PEAT) and for reading up on professional standards and ethics and roles and responsibilities (I don't believe we have the same standards outside of the US)
Hopefully this helps. All the best to everyone who is preparing for October.
