Finally took the Official PTCE Practice Exam. I was confused the first time I looked for into on the practice exam page. The page does describe what the practice exams are all about (There are two general practice exams, a calculations exam, and a medication usage and administration exam.), but I couldn't find the link to press to pay for it and get it started!
It turned out the link was right in front of me, but in the form of a flashing banner. I tend to ignore banners because they're usually ads, but it wasn't the case this time.
These are the various "slides" of the banner as they switch from one to another.
After following the link, you'll wind up having to register for a third time. (The other two times were back when I made my appointment to take the official exam.) This registration gets you a Logon ID and Personal ID number. However unlike the other two registrations, there is no accompanying email, so be sure you really do print out the page or jot down the information somewhere. (If you forget, there still is a method to recover the info, but better to just keep note of it right away.)
That info allows you to see a dashboard that has all your testing info:
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Just click on the link of the exam you want to pay for, then afterwards that exam becomes available to take. I haven't taken a lot of online exams, but I was happy to see that you're able to apply normal Multiple Choice Test-taking strategies. You're shown one question at a time, but you're allowed to "mark" questions. This allows you to go through the entire exam, then you see a summary page. That summary page let's you know which questions you marked, and you can easily jump back to those questions that you wanted to go back to. I didn't realize what the "mark" feature was until I got there, so I didn't really need to use it, but that will be very helpful when it's time to go through the real process.
I took the exam, guessed on the questions that I didn't know the answers to(I need to really study that Top 200+ Drugs list), and still had about thirty minutes left of the hour that was allowed. I passed with a score of 725. I could not find on the PTCB website what the max score is, but if The Pharmacy Technician is right, it's out of a possible 900. (The information on scoring can be found here. It's important to know that each question is not weighed the same, like in traditional multiple choice tests.)
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Besides the overall score, the results page gives you a breakdown of how well you did in the three different areas that the exams tests for.
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Those scores aren't exactly the best scores to be proud of, but like I said earlier, I essentially spent no time studying the Top 200+ Drugs list. The way the The Pharmacy Technician and The Pharmacy Technician Workbook and Certification Review are set up, the drugs list is in the Appendix and not part of the main 17 chapters. With some studying, I'll do better on these drug specific questions and will also hopefully make less stupid mistakes.
This is a pass or fail exam, but I'd be nice to do better. Should I fail, I have to wait two months before taking the exam again. (Failure a second time means waiting two more months, and failure a third time and onward means waiting 6 months! Although that's pretty understandable. The exam really isn't that hard from what I've seen. It takes some studying, but isn't that hard.)
So that's it. The practice exam was certainly helpful. Worth paying the $29.00. And I'll be taking the exam on the 18th. I could spend weeks studying to get as close to a perfect score as possible, but I'd really like to continue learning while working. The exam isn't the goal, the certification is the goal. I'll keep on studying after the 18th, but I'm ready to take the exam now.
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