One of the things that helped me most, or perhaps scared me the most, was reading about others’ experiences studying for and taking the RD exam. I figured I would offer my advice and opinions in order to help anyone who might be desperately googling advice like I was the night before the exam.
First off, I’ll confirm common opinions/experiences that I had before/during the exam:
1. I felt like I was going to fail, throw up, cry (which I did several times), never become a RD, etc. the day before and morning of the exam. I think that these feelings are normal, no matter how prepared you are. Everyone tells you to be confident in the vast amount of knowledge you’ve obtained over the years, and that’s really all you can do on each and every question.
2. The questions can be tricky. Read carefully.
3. It is likely that 85% of what you study will not be on the exam. It’s only 125-145 questions. However, each test is different so studying everything is still important.
4. Maybe I’m alone on this experience, but I wouldn’t recommend wearing colors that will show sweat. I was profusely sweating and shaking before the exam. I’m embarrassing, I know. I think there might have been a few stress hormones being released!
5. For some reason I was super stressed about minuscule details such as whether or not scratch paper would be provided, calculator use, etc. The testing site provided me with a white board and dry-erase marker, and a calculator is built into the exam that you can use on your screen. The kind people at the testing site also provided me with headphones, earplugs, and Kleenexes. I’m not sure if the Kleenexes were for me to wipe my dry erase board with, or for me to use if I burst into tears if I thought I was failing…I’ll never know.
What I did to study:
1. I allowed myself plenty of time. Some people study 7 days, others study 2 months. I fell into the 2 month category (approximately). This allowed me to keep my anxiety at bay and also have time for interviews/a social life (aka watch The Batchelorette with my mom and copious amounts of HGTV and Food Network).
2. I mainly used the Jean Inman book and CDs with a few supplemental class notes/text books. I definitely have a love/hate relationship with my girl Jean. After listening to hours upon hours of her voice during car rides and treadmill dates, I can’t say that I’ll miss her. However, I couldn’t be more thankful to have a binder containing easy to follow information that’s pretty comprehensive. When information in the binder was vague or I wanted more of an in-depth explanation, I would read through my textbooks and study guides from past exams. The Inman guide also contains about 1,000 practice questions that are extremely helpful in preparing you for application-style questions. I would listen to a CD, read from the binder, re-write the information covered by the CD, and then repeat for each CD.
3. I studied each domain for about 1.5-2 weeks and left about 1.5 weeks at the end to review everything (re-listen to the CDs, re-read each domain 2 times, go through each practice exam 1-2 times). I definitely over-studied so this probably wasn’t necessary. However it worked for me! Like I said, it did prevent some anxiety and I passed the first time!
4. Other helpful resources I used just to expose myself to different sample questions were free questions sent to me from one of my professors from DietitianExam.com, IPhone RD Exam apps (CAUTION: some of the answers to the questions on the apps were not accurate and the questions asked were rather complicated, so use at your own risk). I also purchased the CDR study guide and practice exam. Many of the questions on the CDR practice exam were found in the Inman sample question pool. I’m not sure if this is the case each year, but the questions that I was given this year (2015) were almost identical to those found in Inman. However, if you want experience taking a practice exam online it might be worth your money to purchase the CDR guide.
5. Everyone says not to study right before the exam, but I HAD to in order to prevent an anxiety attack. If you think this will help you, do it! I actually stopped about an hour and a half before the exam with driving and getting there early.
6. Finally, I prayed. A lot. I leaned on God throughout the whole process for strength and I definitely couldn’t have done it without Him and my fellow classmates who were always there for encouragement and humor.
Good luck to anyone reading this! You got this. And if you don’t pass the first time, you will be okay. That just means you have extra time to gain more knowledge, work, relax, network, apply for jobs, whatever you want! God has a plan. Trust it even when it’s hard and it’s the opposite of what you think you want.
-Brooke-
I was not paid to promote any of these resources, all opinions are my own.
Cookies and Carrots 