OK so I came across this thread after I failed the NAVLE for the second time and lost an internship in the process and thought my life was over only to marginally fail it AGAIN! Can you believe it??? neither could I!
The only inspiring advice on this thread was from the person who described how she studied to pass it on her third try.
So to add to the constructive advice, I am offering some hope to the increasingly long list of the alleged "minority" that fails this exam on their first (or multiple) try(ies) 🙂
First off! All is not lost! YOU CAN AND WILL PASS THIS EXAM OK? Just focus on what you need to do and how you learn best and you CAN DO IT! no matter what anyone says, it is yours for the taking.
Helpful things I wish someone had told me....BEFORE I took the NAVLE.
1.If you are still in school... Before you even think about taking the NAVLE...
FORGET about those crazy big loans and needing to start work right away to pay them off. yes mine are huge too but you can't pay them off if you fail the NAVLE!
STOP! and Think! about how you are doing at school.
Be honest with yourself! If you are barely passing your semesters at school DO NOT follow the crowd and take this exam the December before you graduate in the hope of passing it in April if you fail in December. BE the SMART vet student you are, swallow your pride and WAIT!
Think about it! When are you realistically going to have time to make up your knowledge to study for it before April if you are in rotations? You're probably not and now you've failed it twice before you have even graduated!
It is not the end of the world to graduate without having taken the NAVLE! You CAN still work!
Some states will allow you to immediately work on a supervised 6 month/1 year temporary license if you HAVE NOT taken and failed the NAVLE, but many states will not offer this license if you have already failed the NAVLE, leaving you unemployable until you pass!
The benefit of this is that you can still apply to the match, you can still graduate and you can still complete an internship or work for your first few months/year out of school and gain the clinical experience you may need to bridge the gap between theory and practice, away from the hype of school, and help make the concepts stick before attempting the NAVLE, in one of these states.
2. When it comes time to signing up to a test bank, don't follow the crowd/hype like me and immediately assume vetprep is what is needed to pass and is the best! (98% pass or your money back etc etc etc-great marketing!), personally I found it very chaotic and disheartening to be constantly thrown questions about some things I had never heard of .. toxicities in cattle or state specific diseases, only to watch my progress score move a mere 1% with every 60 correct questions! I became overwhelmed thinking about all the "far out" questions I couldn't answer and more focussed on completing test banks to catch up with everyone else's progress than on how I could best approach and learn the material in my weakest areas because now, to me, it seemed I was weak at everything! but I had already signed up and paid for the exam so I had to take it right? WRONG!
After I failed, I assumed that the Zukureview program was the same! I did not have the time or resources to explore that option at almost $400 to sign up to each of these testbanks, or the additional NAVLE testbanks at $50 each so I just extended my vetprep subscription and kept going (making it to about 50% of the bank each time) and I watched the videos (I did not want to read someone else's cheat sheets (powerpages) they just seemed to add to an already overloaded pile of paperwork to read!). Some of the videos were helpful nuggets, but they were all super short, and seemed disjointed or overly complicated/detailed for the NAVLE (from a board certified vet already out there!) adding to the overwhelm and they were not easy to listen to on the go because they are only 2mins long, so you spend more time adjusting your phone on the go than listening to material.
I had also signed up to the daily vetprep and zuku questions in 3rd year which I seemed to be getting right every day! talk about a false sense of security!
I know that time is so short and re-writing notes takes forever and it can be hard to know where to start with your study because there are so many species to cover, so little time and you may not have had many lectures on lizards and birds and now this test bank is asking you about rhododendron toxicity in cattle!!
my vetprep subscription reset the test bank to zero, when I failed, as if you never answered any of them before!...but I started to remember questions. This falsely elevated my score rather than my understanding. With 6 months between each exam you are not going to remember the details of piglet diseases as easily but you will remember the answers to weird questions in the bank!
From someone who lost notes before one sitting (stolen device) and had someone accidentally throw out my flashcards before another attempt of this exam...this approach of chaotic questioning and tidbit videos on vetprep was not working for me as I was already scrambling to pull my original hardcopy class notes together and the whole process became an unimaginable rollercoaster ride no-one wants to take!
I changed my approach and focussed on completing species specific test banks in order of priority of % of questions on the exam (see NAVLE bulletin for priority species). This made me feel great about some species but left me almost empty on others as prep time ahead of the exam ran out to complete them all, and it reflected on my score breakdown each time I took the exam and narrowly missed a pass or frustratingly received almost exactly the same score! MIND BLOWINGLY FRUSTRATING!
While starting to contemplate alternative career paths at this point, I figured I couldn't throw away my 4 years of blood, sweat and tears or ditch my loans! I managed to work at a small animal practice for a few months and then took about a month off to study fulltime before the next attempt at the exam.
I switched to Zuku this time- I had previously been turned off by their crowded webpages showing endless links to more links and more pages of highlighted notes! like I didn't have enough class notes to re-locate and work from already! but I signed up for the premium package and got access to the videos and suddenly I had a core comprehensive package of knowledge on the top 20s in each species that somebody wanted to explain to me, to work from. It was awesome! and the videos are relatively long (25-70mins each) and are like a class with powerpoint presentations on the key points of each disease. The speakers were very knowledgable and seemed completely in tune with the requirements of the exam, the form of questioning at the end of the lectures was a more accurate reflection of the real exam.
The audio only version of these worked out really great for me while driving, and I didn't have to reach for my phone every 2mins to locate and play the next topic like with vetprep.
I was constantly plugged in from the time I woke up until just before I went to sleep! and I learned everything I needed to really know on those topics well.
You can play these over and over and it doesn't matter how long you are sitting in traffic, at the grocery store, walking the block, because it is one continuous theme that is easy to follow and you are still learning!
After listening to the audio versions I went back and watched the video presentations, looked at the illustrations I had been hearing about on the audioversion, made my own flashcards and cemented in the concepts.
Some of the speakers were really great and some spoke so fast or so slow or in a low voice or cover so much that they were an endurance test to go through but I persisted until they were all covered.
I may have answered 100/4000 questions in that bank but I went through every single video and all the questions at the end of each video and now had a set of cards on the top 20 in each species with the keypoints of each disease to flash through in the days before the exam.
Finally some good core notes to work with!
It was reassuring to know I had covered every species equally and in accordance with the top most important diseases and that I would have enough time to review them right before the exam without worrying about forgetting everything on one species by the time I made it through the next batch of notes like before!
Many of the pearls or concepts discussed or emphasized in the videos were on the actual NAVLE and I finally passed. Thank you Zuku!
Note I am not discounting the value of the test banks, they are great help for timing, which for me was not really an issue except in blocks with a lot of long-winded questions. In those cases I found that I just had to be very focused on answering the most important (questioned) species and in some cases had to skim a question on lizards or business, and extra quickly guess the answer, but that worked ok because I knew those questions didn't count as much as they don't make up the bulk of your score as outlined in the NAVLE bulletin so I tried really hard not to waste time on them!
So people, I hope none of you EVER have to take this exam more than once! but if you do, just know you are not alone, there were many in your shoes before you and there will be many who will follow because life happens and no-one is perfect!
Just think about what approach works best for you, stick with it and do your best. If you have been out of the game for a while then go with Zuku premium -it's far more comprehensive, it's the book on the NAVLE that was never written, and in video format!
Take it from me! Persistence pays off!
Good luck! YOU CAN DO IT!
