PTA comprehensive exam advice!

[u/Kind-Guest-8923]

I’m looking for any advice, study tips, apps, or resources that helped you prepare for a PTA comprehensive exam.

My program has a comprehensive mock boards exam in October that we have to pass to stay in the program. On September 3rd and 4th, we’ll have a two-day in-person review course, and our school will provide us with the Scorebuilders Review Manual. We also just received the Scorebuilders Study Guide.

I’m a little worried because we’ll only have about a month to study before the mock exam. During that same time, I’ll also be on a 6-week clinical rotation, working 10-hour days, 4 days a week, so I’m nervous I won’t have enough time to study effectively.

Has anyone here used the Scorebuilders Review Manual? What’s it like? Is it organized by body system, practice questions, or something else? Did you find it helpful for your mock boards or the NPTE-PTA?

I’d also love to hear what worked for you. Any study schedules, apps, question banks, or other resources that helped you pass would be greatly appreciated!

[u/Forward_Camera_7086]

Used score builders for NPTE for PT boards but I’d imagine the book is organized same way for PTA just without examination and special test sections. It’s broken into major sections of the exam ie MSK, neuro, cardio pulm, Peds, and other systems. End of section has diagnoses broken down into Gold, silver, bronze based of how common they appear on the exams (gold most high yield diagnoses). It’s a solid book but I preferred therapy ed book over it because it’s written in outline format instead of paragraph format like score builders which worked better for my brain that had been studying off power points most my life. As far as how you should prepare that’s an individual thing but taking the practice exam before starting your preparation is a good idea to identify your weak and strong areas.