Taking the Acupuncture Boards

Good test taking skills can help add 10% or more to your score. It can make a difference between passing and failing one of your comp exams. Someone with average book knowledge and great test taking skills will out-perform someone with great book knowledge but poor test taking skills.

1. This is about Mental Endurance. Tests aren’t just about what you know but about how well you can recall what you know under pressure. A lot of that pressure is the emotional meaning you attach to the exam. The more meaning you attach to it, the harder it is to keep your mind clear and focused. And when your mind is clouded by emotion, you’ll have trouble adding 1+1. When I realized exams are more about endurance and less about how good of a practitioner I am, the stress was greatly reduced. Meditation and qigong exercises before the exam will help calm your mind.

2. Eat a good breakfast before the exam. Bring in drinks and snacks to the exam (if they still allow you to do so.) Remember this is an endurance test. In order for your mind to function properly you need a full tank of gas.

3. Use scratch paper. At the start of your exam, use scratch paper and write down the Big Picture and other stuff you know you may have trouble recalling later. Trust me, you don’t want to attempt this after battering your brain for 50 questions. Get it down in the beginning. A small time invested will pay large dividends later.

4. Make notes. Write stuff down.  Underline important parts of a question. Make an approximate diagnosis even if it doesn’t ask you for it. Tests often make you perform an extra mental step to try to throw you off. For example, they may ask what the He Sea Point is on the Foot Shaoyang channel. Not quite as straight forward as asking about He Sea on the GB channel. You will make mistakes if you try to pull everything directly from your head. Even for questions that are “easy”, don’t get cocky or lazy. Stupid mistakes can be reduced significantly by simply writing it on paper.

5. Answer the easy questions first. Skip the hard ones or ones you are uncertain about and come back to them later. Remember that hard questions and easy questions are worth the same amount of points. You don’t want a hard question to cost you time that you could have spent answering 5-10 easy questions. Hard questions can also exhaust the mind and zap your energy/morale. If you are on a groove, you don’t want these to take you out of it.

6. Don’t change you answer! Unless you had a sudden revelation from Yellow Emperor/Jesus/Buddha/Santa Claus/Bugs Bunny, don’t second guess. More times than not, your initial answer is the right one. Tests tend to make you over think your right answer into the wrong one. Don’t do it!!!

7. Go back to your foundation. Use your 8 principles and channel theory. They will help immensely when narrowing down your answer to the right one. For example, knowing a case is for a deficiency condition, you can immediately throw out all the herbs/formulas/points that are for excess. Usually this means eliminating 2 of the 4 choices at a simple glance. Remember this is an endurance test. Having to deal with only 2 choices right off the bat will conserve energy.

8. Use your deductive skills. If you are struggling with the answer, mark it, skip it and come back to it later. When you come back to it, start by crossing off the obviously bad answers. Oftentimes this is 2 of the 4 choices. Use 8 principles. Use channel/organ theory. Come up with a diagnosis. Sometimes, the question is answered in a later part of the test. If you’re still stuck, remember to stretch, munch on something or take a few breaths. Giving your mind a small break to relax may help you recall the info you need.

9. You already know this stuff. Most everything you’ll see on the exam are things you’ve learned before. They are sitting somewhere in that brain of yours. You just have to find ways to effectively pull them out. Sometimes, it may not come directly but through a gut feel. Learn to trust your intuition. It will come in handy when you are a practitioner.

Good luck!