How Many PANCE and PANRE Practice Exams Should You Take

Full-length PANCE PANRE Practice Exams on smartypance Along with practice questions, taking full-lengthPANCE and PANRE practice testsis an indispensable part of preparing for the PANCE and PANRE. How many full-length mock exams should you take, though? And how often? Lets use a sports analogy to shed some light on these important questions. What Sports Teams Can Teach Us About PANCE and PANRE Practice Consider my favorite football team; the Seattle Seahawks. What if all they ever did was practice but never played any games? They could spend weeks on end practicing the fundamentals, working on their conditioning, watching film, and scrimmaging against themselves, but theyd never know how much they were improving (if at all) if they never tested themselves against a live opponent. Thats what games are for, to show us where we stand and enable us to apply what weve been practicing in a real-time environment. On the flip side, imagine if they played three or four games every week! That seems like overkill, doesnt it? I mean, theyd never get significantly better just playing games because theyd never be able to work on the mistakes they were making in those games or work on new plays and strategies not to mention the mental and physical fatigue they would experience. So over-emphasizing games isnt the right answer, either. Theres a sweet spot for a football team, then, between practice and games. Its a balancing act. They need ample time to practice, but then they need to occasionally test themselves with games. They play one game each week, and never more than that. They take one rest week during the season known as a "bye" week. Thus, teams do get better from game experience, but most of their improvement comes from practice. The Practice vs. Practice Test Spectrum Virtual PANCE simulation exam on smartypance.com The same balancing act applies to your PANCE and PANRE prep. If you think about it as a continuum, on one end of the spectrum would be people who never take a full-length PANCE practice test or delay taking their mock PANCE exam for weeks or even months, thinking theyre not ready. I hear it often from students: But I havent learned everything yet, and I dont feel ready to take the mock exam or "I don't need to take a full-length test, just doing practice questions is enough" or "I don't have time to take a full-length practice exam I'll just wait till exam day." Thats an error in thinking. Even if you havent covered all of the NCCPA Content Blueprintor you are taking lots of topic-specific PANCE practice exams you still want to take periodic full-length mock PANCE and PANRE practice exams throughout your preparation so that you can get a benchmark of your progress and practice, identify strengths and weakness, and apply the concepts and strategies you have learned so far. Thats really important. Its not the kind of thing you want to leave until the end. On the other end of the spectrum are students who only take exams believing that this alone provides sufficient practice. Theyre using the full-length mock exams as a source of practice problems, but they're neglecting the real practice that will prepare them for game day. Practice is practice and tests are tests Dont make the mistake of blurring that line. Thinking about that spectrum on the PANCE, then, theres a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. You need to spend ample time learning concepts and working through practice questions before each full-length practice test. But then a couple of times you should block out the required hours and test yourself with a full-length PANCE simulation exam. Then review your results, figure out what types of questions youre still getting wrong, and get back to practicing your weak areas. After another week or two, take another full-length practice test and continue that pattern until youve shorn up your weaknesses. In terms of how many mock PANCE or PANRE practice tests you should actually take, it will vary depending on how much time you have before your test date. For most people, I recommend making the time to take a full-length (4 -5 hour ) mock exam at least two times. Tips for Maximizing Your PANCE and PANRE Practice Exams One quick note about that last point. Its very important that when you do set aside the time to take a full-lengthPANCE practice test, that you re-create the testing environment as accurately as possible. As I said earlier, practice tests are designed to help you gauge your current abilities and to get an accurate approximation of what your score might be on the real thing. As such, you want to take them as seriously as possible. Toward that end, here are a few tips to help you make the most of yourPANCE and PANRE practice tests: Take your PANCE practice tests on the same day of the week and at around the same time of day as you plan to take the real thing.If youre going to take the real PANCE on a Saturday morning, then take your practice tests on Saturday mornings. That will help you get a feel for your fatigue level, how often you need to use the bathroom, your state of focus, etc. Complete all sections.Theres a temptation to "cheat" when you are taking your practice exam by skipping sections, rushing, or not completing the full exam block. But you wont be skipping questions or sections on test day, so dont skip them during your practice tests. You need to get a feel for what its like to have already done an hours worth of work before getting to the quant and verbal sections. Prepare for that extra mental stress and how it impacts your ability to concentrate during the rest of the exam. Dont short-change yourself. Dont pause the exam.You wont be able to press pause on the real PANCE, so dont pause your practice tests. If you get stuck on a question, use it as an opportunity to practice making an educated guess or marking it to come back to later. Thats how you hone your time management skills, a crucial part of scoring your best on test day. Honor the breaks.Hydrate and eat during the breaks. Use the bathroom within the allotted break time. Go to an external location, like a local library, to take your practice tests.Our own homes are usually too comfortable and too distracting to simulate a real test-day experience. A library, by contrast, has a little bit of ambient background noise like youll have at the test center, but its still quiet enough to focus and get in a good zone. Feel some butterflies!One of the hardest things about practice tests is recreating the nerves you may feel on test day. So how can you create a little bit of pressure around your practice experience? A risk/reward system is a good way to do that. Think about a risk and a reward youll honor depending on the outcome of the practice test. For example, If I score at least a 70% on this practice test, Im going to treat myself to a 30-minute massage. But if I dont score at least a 70%, then Im going to clean the kitchen and all of the bathrooms in my house this weekend. Talk about pressure! Now for your first full-length practice test, I wouldnt worry as much about the actual score. There are still likely some content areas or question types you havent even reviewed yet, after all. Instead, your risk/reward on those earlier tests could be around the number of questions you have to guess on, or how mentally engaged you feel like you were throughout the test, or how well you managed your fru stration level, etc. That part is up to you, but get creative and have some fun with it. Decompress afterwards.Dont immediately dive into more practice. Its a mentally-draining exercise to take a full-length practice test, so take the rest of the day off. But then the next day, spend some time reviewing your results and going through all of the questions you got wrong. Use it as a learning opportunity. Use the website, to find answers to questions you were unsure of. Then dive back in to your studying! The great American football coach Vince Lombardi is famous for saying that "practice doesnt make perfect; rather, itsperfectpractice that makes perfect." So take that mindset not only into your daily study sessions, but also into your practice tests. I hope youve found the football analogy helpful and that you now have a better grasp of how to balance your PANCE and PANRE study sessions and practice tests. If you have any questions, post them below orreach out to me here. Take Full-Length PANCE and PANRE Practice Exams Members can take two full-length 300 and 400-question virtual PANCE and PANRE exams on my website at www.smartypance.com. I also recommend taking one or two 120 question PANCE/PANRE practice exams on the NCCPA website for $50 each. They're not cheap, but do not miss the opportunity to take an exam written by the exam makers themselves. You may also like -The PANCE and PANRE Preparation Checklist Let's break down your PANCE and PANRE preparation in as few steps as possible 1. Download the 'Examination Content Blueprint' (ECB) from the NCCPA The ECB lists the diseases that you should focus on and describes which information []The 4 Best PANCE and PANRE Study Guides and Review Books What are the best PANCE and PANRE board review books? Here are my picks for the top PANCE and PANRE review books of 2019 that have helped me score in the top 5% on both the PANCE and PANRE exams. 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