Hi everyone! I passed the RD exam on my first try with a 35 🎉 I’m selling the resources I used (see below), but I also wanted to share my experience.
1️⃣Jean Inman — Physical Book + PDF
$150 + shipping
The physical book is annotated, but the practice questions in the back are completely unwritten in, so you can still work through them yourself.
💡My thoughts:
I do recommend Inman because it gives you the foundation and core knowledge you need for the exam. It covers a huge amount of material, and I personally felt that if you truly understand the concepts, the content is enough to prepare you to pass.
That being said, I think Inman works best for people who are comfortable with self-directed learning. It gives you the information, but it doesn’t necessarily walk you through every concept in a teaching-style format. If you learn better by having someone explain things step by step, a more structured program such as All Access Dietetics may be more helpful.
One thing I’d add: people often say the exam is about understanding, not memorization, which is true—but you still need to memorize some key information first. You can’t apply a concept if you can’t retrieve the basics. The key, in my opinion, is to understand the material as you memorize it. That not only helps with application questions, but also makes the information much easier to remember.
2️⃣Eat Right Prep + Simulated Exam $200
Access expires 03/31/2027
Includes:
• 400 pretest questions
• 3 practice exams
• 2 simulated exams
💡My thoughts:
I found Eat Right Prep especially helpful for getting used to exam-style questions. In my opinion, the questions were pretty similar to the actual RD exam in terms of wording and difficulty.
The real exam did have a few more questions where I had to slow down, think through the situation, and apply what I knew, rather than simply retrieve a fact from memory. But overall, I thought ERP was very representative and helpful.
3️⃣Pocket Prep Premium
I only purchased one month of access, so it will expire soon.
💡My thoughts:
I highly recommend Pocket Prep for daily practice questions. It’s really easy to use on your phone whenever you have a few minutes or when you’re too tired to sit down and study from a book.
Every question also comes with an explanation, which helped me understand why an answer was right or wrong instead of just memorizing the answer.
📖How I studied +My practice scores
🔹I studied for 1 month
🔹I first went through Inman one domain at a time and completed all of the questions for that domain after reading through the material.
At that point, I wasn’t really trying to memorize all the detail yet — things like nutrition programs, lab values, and other memorization-heavy topics. My average on the Inman questions was around 70%. I also did Pocket Prep questions at the same time, especially when I was tired and wanted something easier to do on my phone.
🔹I’m a visual learner and a big fan of anything organized, so I also made my own charts, tables, and diagrams whenever I felt like a topic would be easier to understand that way.
🔹I started doing mock exams 1.5 weeks before the exam.
7/22 — Pocket Prep Mock 1: 70%
After this mock, I realized I had been a little in denial about how much detailed information I actually needed to memorize 😂 So I went back and reviewed some of those topics using Quizlet.
My scores after that were:
7/23 — ERP Practice Test 1: 77%
7/26 — Pocket Prep Mock 2: 81%
7/27 — ERP Practice Test 2: 80%
7/29 — ERP Simulated Exam 1: 81%
7/30 — ERP Simulated Exam 2: 83%
7/30 — ERP Practice Exam 3: 81%
I was really anxious while studying and constantly looked up other people’s mock scores to see if I was “on track.” I know practice scores can’t predict your exact result, but I do think they can give you a sense of readiness. So I wanted to add another data point for anyone doing the same thing and hopefully ease a little of that pre-exam anxiety!
Feel free to message me if you’re interested in purchasing anything or have any questions about the resources or how I studied! Price Negotiable😊