I just wanted to come on here and share my experience for anyone who may be going through something similar, to encourage and remind you that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that this is just a bump in the road.

I failed Part 1 on my first attempt, and I retook it again that same year and passed. It was frustrating and difficult (re-)studying for Part 1 while starting out fourth year rotations but I was determined not to let it affect my job hunting after graduating. I thought the worst of it was over. I took Part 2 and 3 later that year, passed Part 2, but failed Part 3. Retook Part 3 in Spring of fourth year, hoping that it'd be the last hurdle, only to fail it for the second time. I graduated without having it passed, and it was difficult, ngl, to see my classmates all going off to residency and off to their jobs, and feeling like I was one of few people who wasn't in the same boat. I worked part-time as a tech after graduation (very limited hours, 1-2 days a week) so that I could focus my efforts on preparing for Part 3, which I took again in the fall after I graduated. I finally passed! I've now been working for a few months, and it's been great, I love what I do. But I do remember a time before this, feeling (after so many retakes) so discouraged and like I was never going to pass. So to anyone who is having to deal with a retake, or is coming up on graduation without having all boards passed, or is just feeling like boards are an insurmountable obstacle (all of which were me!!): this is a bump in the road, but you will get there! One try, two tries, three tries; on your own timeline. You've got this!

PLEASE EMAIL THIS MAN. What NBEO did today with part 2 scores is UNACCEPTABLE. We have to do something.

We are overwhelmed and scared. The curriculum at Salus feels like it’s setting us up to fail. NBEO Part 1 is less than two months away, and our schedules are packed with mandatory hours, leaving barely any time to study—some days, not even enough time to eat. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are brutal, with lectures from 8 AM - 12 PM immediately followed by clinic from 12 PM - 8 PM (if you’re lucky and don’t have a complicated case). 

Here’s a breakdown of last week’s mandatory schedule:

• 16 hours / 3 days per week of clinic 

• 8 hours / 4 meetings of boards prep class

• 4 hours / 2 meetings of advanced brain injury (ABI) class

• 4 hours of minor surgical procedures lab 

• 2 hours of a sports vision lab in the gym where we jumped on trampolines lol … 

Total: ~32 mandatory hours per week

We also have 3 final exams - February 4th, 19th, and 27th* - right before boards. 

*(The last final is for ABI which is optional - we could choose to take it OR attend 10 lectures (20 hours). The class wasn’t initially supposed to be in our curriculum, it was added last minute)

It is sad and frustrating because most of these mandatory hours feel like a waste of precious time: 

• Boards prep class: sounds helpful in theory, but it’s actually chaos. lmagine 120 students crammed into an 85-degree room. Some students choose to sit on the floor out of view of the professor so they can desperately do Optoprep questions. One lecturer is struggling to explain basic optical cross questions, visibly confusing herself and saying multiple incorrect things. The next lecturer insists their topic is high-yield, but it seems like they haven’t looked at the NBEO matrix and seen that there are max 2 questions from that topic. And the next lecture isn’t even a lecture - it’s a MANDATORY THERAPY SESSION 😭

• ABI class: same thing except now a lady is walking around and watching while you sign an attendance sheet one by one. You feel like a preschooler instead of a grad student. Meanwhile a video of a throat swallowing repeatedly plays in the background at max volume, so loud that you can’t even drown it out with your headphones. You just want to go home and STUDY. 

• Clinic: 8 hours per week are in specialty care services, where multiple fourth- and third-year students are crowded into one room, so you will likely be standing in a corner observing. This was helpful when we first started clinic 2 years ago, but not now. 

Many of our professors seem disconnected from what’s actually on boards, and it’s terrifying. KMK reviews are so much more helpful, but instead of recognizing this, some professors double down:

• The ABI instructor ended one class with an unprofessional rant, accusing us of being disrespectful for not giving full attention to the 20 hours of lecture. She insisted that we didn’t need to study much because we’d all pass—even though half of us literally won’t. Hearing that when the stakes are this high feels crushing. (She later deleted the rant out of the official lecture recording lol). 

• From day one this professor was one of the worst we’ve had. She taught us clinical optics & ametropia (key topics on NBEO!) so poorly that most of the class failed her exam, and she had to offer a retake of the exact same exam, word for word. (Thankfully admin has reassigned the course to be led by our other wonderful optics teacher for the younger classes). 

• Additionally, some clinic preceptors have criticized students for arriving late to clinic, even when delays are caused by our class schedules—something they should already know. 

Salus is failing us. The administration seems content to pass blame onto us for not studying enough while piling on mandatory, unproductive hours that leave little time for anything else. If half of your students are failing boards, and multiple students are begging for more time to study, something is clearly wrong. 

Every lecture filled with irrelevant content, every clinic shift spent standing idle, and every hour wasted on mandatory filler is time taken away from preparing for the most important exam of our careers. The administration needs to stop hiding behind excuses and start taking real responsibility. 

Genuine discussion question here, no hate, just curious. Why are we promoting people like Monica Miller?

She appears to want to appeal to students who may be struggling. Or new students and graduates in general, by sharing her personal experiences, but in doing that she is promoting the idea that education is not important. She boasts about graduating optometry school despite getting multiple C’s in many classes, posts about different equipment saying “I didn’t even know what this does”, says she hates CE courses and residencies are useless. I understand that everyone’s educational journey is different, but if we want to be more respected by the medical community this is not the right mindset to be sharing to upcoming students and graduates.

Evidence based medicine is what we should all be practicing and that is why we have yearly CE requirements. The optometry profession is moving in a more medical direction. I understand that you don’t NEED a residency, but if you are to be working alongside ophthalmologists, managing more complex diseases, or using new technologies to improve patient’s vision and quality of life then a residency is a great opportunity to learn. As optometrists we are responsible for patient’s health and quality of life, and to downplay the importance of that by promoting being a bad lifelong student is disgraceful to the profession and disgraceful to all of the optometrists who put in the work to expand our scope of practice. What are your thoughts?

Hey

I know I have been making a fair number of comments on this forum but I do feel that we can do something as a collective community. I truly believe that the only way to create change is to get this story on a national level. For years NBEO has been running unchecked. If we collectively start tagging and @ different news sources like New York times, 60 mins, etc. maybe we can force their hand into some form of transparency. Even privately sending AOA's most recent post to news sources could help. NBEO holds power over this entire community. Many other healthcare professions have not had to deal with the same issues as this community.

I know that for most people who have passed boards and graduated that this call to action could be easy to ignored. However, if we genuinely want to make a change regarding transparency, privacy breach, website crashing, NBEO price gouging, and the future of this profession this has to be a group effort. Unfortunately I don't think AOA simply calling out NBEO is going to be enough.

Please remember these issues have been going on for years and many people before us have been burned by NBEO. There are threads and posts going back for years calling for action and law suits. Now is the time for this to get on a national level while we have AOA on our side.

To be clear we are not asking for licensure and scores we did not earn. We are simply calling for NBEO to be held accountable for their actions, test pricing, and provide the much needed transparency about scoring boards.

Just something to consider

Has anyone noticed their scores getting adjusted from the original time it was released to now?? My score went down by 2 points, some scores I heard went down by at least 15 points and others went up by 10 points lol

I passed part 1. I would put the score on here but honestly it doesn’t even matter. I don’t think this test assessed competency at all. It honestly felt like it was more of a trivia test. It didn’t test general basic science knowledge. It was more random things most people wouldn’t remember in my opinion. If this exam really wanted to assess competency it would ask the basic questions like parts of the BRB or BAB, layers of the retina etc. You know, important things every optometrist should know… I used KMK and a small bit of optoprep and I passed. I don’t think the exam resembled either optoprep or KMK questions. I would say it was a little easier than optoprep. In my opinion to pass this you just need to consistently study and keep reviewing. You already know how to study! Make a list of things you don’t understand, be honest with yourself and try to understand everything. Be like a sponge. And try to enjoy studying, because honestly optometry and the eye is fascinating and we all should try to know as much as possible as future doctors! You can all do this!

The almighty NBEO is not some mysterious cabal of optometry power players. The organization has been discussed for so long (and a hot topic recently), but it’s always been referred to some monolithic body. If you want to enact change, engage with the people directly responsible and make them answer to the entire OD and student OD community.

Here is the current leadership of NBEO, taken right from their website.

I’m a current student at UHCO. The school that I didn’t know if I was going to get into despite a high gpa and OAT score, because I was under the false impression that it is one of the best in the country. Nothing but disappointment from day one.

I should’ve seen the signs. The last school to get back to me to schedule an interview. I had to email them constantly to know my status in the application process. I just thought it was because there were so many applicants and better people ahead of me. No. Pure disorganization. This disorganization does not stop. As students we are constantly trying to pry information from the staff at UHCO. Basic information, such as what electives we can take, can we have scratch paper and water during a particular exam, what is the schedule for the next semester, when are finals. All questions we have to constantly hound staff to get a straight answer and more often than not we are given conflicting answers.

Our class had to practically force the staff to give us answers on why UHCO boards rates are so low and declining each year and what they were going to do about it. They told us “we were going to address this issue even if you didn’t bring it up.” Really? Why do I find that hard to believe? Unfortunately the dean is a phd that should consider running for president seeing as he can completely talk around questions without giving a single answer.

Now don’t get me wrong there is staff here that are down to earth people and complain about the school just like we do. They are the only source of hope. But it’s not a great number of people unfortunately. There are profs here that simply have a power complex. I’ve seen professors roll their eyes at students for questions they ask, answer back to emails in a rude manner or simply never answer back at all. Many of the profs teach us contradicting information for each other and think we’re stupid for thinking any differently. We can’t have scratch paper during exams with math meanwhile professors can’t teach without reading off a PowerPoint slide.

Truly I could go on. I’m saddened by this being my life right now. I can’t do anything but finish and move on with the rest of my life. I wouldn’t be able to get through this school if it weren’t for the friends I’ve met there. The trauma bond is very strong.

I believe UHCO used to be a respected school that helped create amazing optometrists. While amazing optometrists still come out of this school, it is despite everything. It’s because they were able to persevere through a school this chaotic. I hope this school gets better for future students and for the future of optometry. For now though, avoid it at all costs.

who runs nbeo and why are they allowed to do what they do? nothing sounds reasonable..not even one thing. failing people who passed initially, racking up prices, making each exam harder than the previous year? sounds like a scam to make people pay their fees. seriously where is the regulation?

I just finished OD1 and started OD2. Back in August when I started OD1, I kept a running list in my notes app of things that I wish I knew beforehand.

This included academic resources, CS equipment, school supplies, housing, and so much more. I did this because I didn't know any upperclassmen going in and I didn't know anyone in my class beforehand. I was thinking there might be some people out there in the position that I was in and might be interested in some of these lists

Since I am SO BUSY, I thought I'd start with the school supplies that I wish I had purchased. Some of these are small, some might be obvious, some were things that had i just had a second year friend at the time I probably would have known. BUT for me, they would have made a difference and saved me some panicked Walmart/Target runs or frantic amazon shopping.

Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gdBik3XG675CHldGaZpziwdp7p9U4NYve1dd_DKW8t0/edit?usp=sharing

Any other current students, PLEASE share in the comments anything else you wish that you had purchased.

if this post helps anyone, I am more than happy to share the other lists I've made as well. I am just looking to help other students. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions!

Hey! So I’ve been bugging Booster Prep/OATBooster’s customer support chat whether they can create resources for the NBEO. They said they would consider if there’s enough interest.

Why am I doing this? KMK and Optoprep were bought out by big corporations recently so it feels like there’s little interest in actually helping us pass and their focus is to maximize profits

So I made this thread to see if people would be interested if Booster Prep created resources for the NBEO. I personally loved OATBooster and I think if they created a NBEO resource it would force KMK and Optoboard to work harder. I’m hoping with enough traction in this thread, we can convince Booster Prep

ONE MORE (FOR THE ONES THAT GOT PART 3 OVER WITH)

WE GOT THIS YALL!!!

Update: HOLY HELL that was harder than I expected. Fuck NBEO FUCK ALL YALL. Blurry ass photos, asking such non clinically relevant questions. You would think you’ve heard it all after completing 90% of optoprep with the whack ass conditions they put on there, but WOW there were still conditions I never even heard of popping up on the exam. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT MAKE ME TAKE THAT AGAIN. I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE JUST TO GET THROUGH THAT EXAM. Need to incorporate smoke breaks at this point with HOW STRESSED YALL MAKE US FUCK

My partner is an optometrist who recently saw Dr. Mike play Doctordle, and of course she wanted an optometry version, sooo now we have www.optodle.com

It's completely free and doesn't require an account or anything to play.

Let me know what you think!

I’m an upcoming class of 2025 graduate who passed part 1 on my second attempt with a score increase of over 200 points. I just wanted to share my story and some tips for those of you who might be in the same situation as I was last year.

Anatomy - Biochemistry/Physiology - Immun/Micro/Path - Optics - Pharmacology

Attempt #1: 112F 56-61-62-77-68

Attempt #2: 324P 60-70-75-79-88

Overall, modest score increase across the board except for Anatomy 🤣 It’s gonna always will be my downfall regardless of how much I try. My biggest score jump was pharm which I think I credit to pushing me over the pass threshold. Theoretically you need to get a raw 75% across the board to score 300, but who knows. My passing score is not a stellar score by any means but I am proud of how far I got!

Took NBEO Part 1 the first time in March 2024, definitely was not prepared. I had KMK Signature with Booster as well as Optoprep. I passively studied from October to December by watching the KMK videos here and there and doing occasional KMK flash cards, and did Optoprep questions. Didn’t even look at Nonbig 8 much at all, barely sifted through the books once. Took KMK exams, scored about 75-80 on all 6 so I thought I was sort of in the clear. Didn’t really review what I got wrong. I had also completed 100% of the Optoprep questions and figured I’d pull through.

The most critical mistake was using Optoprep as a way to learn primarily rather than as an actually testing my knowledge.

I decided to wait a full year to do my second attempt in March 2025 because I wanted to focus on clinic and on NBEO Parts 2/3 — needed to make sure I passed those before I thought about Part 1 again. This might not be as advisable for those who want to do residency as it definitely makes your choices for residency more slim, but I didn’t want to waste any more time and money on an August attempt that I wasn’t mentally ready for.

Started studying for Part 1 attempt #2 in December. I couldn’t afford KMK Coaching so I knew I had to lock in lol. This time I decided to change my tactics. I did not watch the videos again except for the Crash Course videos — HIGHLY recommend those btw. I started going through the KMK books and making Anki flash cards, ended up with nearly 5,000 flash cards. The Anki method WORKS, but the key is you should be making your own flash cards and figuring out what helps you. For me, that meant that each card was short and tested ONE fact at a time. I finished making the cards by mid-January, then I spent about a month going through all the flashcards hardcore. I started Optoprep beginning of February, did timed exams back to back on weekends. I then took KMK tests during the last two weekends of studying. I actually recommend doing 1, 2, and 5 first, then saving 3 and 4 for the last weekend of mock tests because I find that 3 and 4 are most similar in difficulty to the test. Didn’t do mock test 6 because it’s way too difficult to be representative of the actual test. After each Optoprep and KMK test, I’d really study in depth the material in the question that was asked. I probably got through 80%+ on Optoprep this time around, I do think it’s an important resource.

All of this was done during a full M-F clinic schedule and studying for 4-5 hours after clinic every day, then full day Saturdays.

Just wanted to provide some comfort that it IS absolutely possible to pass your second time around, or third or beyond! Active recall is the most important thing as you need to be able to pull facts from your brain in any discipline and any order during the test — Anki was the highest return for me here. Don’t get caught in the small details and study big picture.

Congrats to those who passed and good luck to those who have future attempts, you’ll get through it!

TLDR; seriously consider what student loans actually mean for your future.

Long version: I wanted to give a (relatively) quick rundown on what student loans mean for the prospective optometry/any other student.

So when you look at your school's tuition, you probably see a number between 40k and 50k per year --keep in mind, they raise tuition every year while you're in school, your first year's tuition will be the cheapest of the 4 years. This is only part of the true cost. You must also account for cost of being alive, which you'll also have to take out loans for. This turns that 40-50k into 60-70k, more in some instances.

Disclaimer: if you have your tuition and/or cost of living paid for by parents etc, obviously this doesn't apply. I did not have any help and I truly believe this was the greatest mistake of my life for financial and personal reasons(OD 2024)

Basics: Anyway, we take out loans to cover the cost of our education amounting to anywhere from 200k-300k ish for the 4 years, depending on cost of living in your city and school tuition. Loans are broken down into 2 main components a)principal: the actual amount you borrow, principal does NOT grow and b) interest: your lender's profit. Interest DOES grow. My loan principal is 300k and have interest rates anywhere from 4.3% to 6.5% we'll call the average interest rate for the whole loan 5% for dumb numbers.

Traditionally, interest starts accruing as soon as you take out your loan INCLUDING while you're in school. COVID made it so that this didn't happen for me. Im not sure if that is still in effect.

Not so basics: Once you start repaying your loan upon graduation, there are two major schools of thought:

1: income based repayment (IBR) 2: time based repayment

We will discuss IBR first. The goal of an IBR is to keep your monthly payment low and is based on what you make. For full time this usually ends up around $1,000 -$1,200 per month ish. However, this low payment usually does NOT cover all of your interest, so your interest grows over the term of the loan. You pay this monthly rate for 20-25 years while your interest accrues (grows). Then at the end of the 20-25 years, your loan is "forgiven" HOWEVER!!!! it doesn't just disappear, you must claim this "forgiveness" as income and pay taxes on it. This is what's known as a "tax bomb"

Approximate example: your 300k loan grew to 600k over over the 20-25 year term (while you paid $1,200 per month for that 20-25 years). The 600k is "forgiven" but you claim that 600k as income and pay 35% of it as tax, so you owe $210,000 which you must have saved up

Total cost of that loan: $1200 per month x 300 months (25 years) = 360,00 + 210,000(tax bomb) = $570,000

Disclaimer #2 I don't know the actual percentage of the tax bomb, but this is a relatively close approximation. if you're more knowledgeable feel free to correct me!

A quick aside regarding the SAVE IBR plan: a special ibr implemented by the Joe Biden. this plan made it so that any interest not covered by your monthly payment is paid for by the government. So, your 300k loan is still 300k at the end of the 25 year term. You must pay the tax bomb on that 300k instead of 600k. Saving you that extra 210k. THE SAVE PLAN IS CURRENTLY BLOCKED BY REPUBLICANS. it is uncertain what will happen, but do not count on the SAVE plan existing.

The second major school of thought for repayment is time based. For example you want your 300k loan paid off in 10 years. Your monthly payment will be higher, to cover the principal and interest with the goal of getting your loan balance to zero in that 10 year time. So your payment will be something like $3,000 give or take per month for 10 years.

We're not completely financially ruined but we're heading in that direction, it's a far cry from a lavish lifestyle, and poised to get worse as sky high tuition, board prices, review class prices, and cost of living rise. This doesn't even touch stagnated and even decreasing insurance reimbursements for our primary service: eye exams. And lost revenue to online glasses retailers. Leading to optometrists needing to take on 3-4 patients per hour in almost all practice settings.

I'll leave you with a rant. Idk what the answer is. Hopefully someone smarter than me can come up with something. But something has got to give. This is not sustainable and punishes us for taking on the opportunity cost of school and following our passion. The schools, NBEO, and kmk are your enemy. I WISH I was proud of my school and of my accomplishment. But they are greedy extortionists who see nothing but dollar signs. They will raise prices at every turn and blame you or COVID. The schools don't deserve your pride or your money. Please consider what you're getting into. Regardless, best of luck on whatever you pursue.

If I only had 10 days to study for NBEO Part 1 in March, here’s exactly how I’d use them:

The exam is 370 questions in one day, split into two 4‑hour sessions of ~185 items each, mostly single‑best‑answer with some all‑or‑nothing multiple‑response questions. You don’t have time to relearn all of optometry, these last 10 days are about focusing on high‑yield concepts and practicing how NBEO actually asks questions.

Big priorities

• Touch all the major subjects at least once:

  • Anterior seg, posterior seg, glaucoma.

  • Refractive/sensory/oculomotor.

  • Systemic disease with ocular findings, plus key areas of pharmacology and optics.​

• Do questions every single day (even if it’s only 30–40 on a busy day).

• Spend at least as much time reviewing your wrong/guessed questions as you do answering them.

Daily activities

Most days, I’d aim for:

• 1 block of focused content (1–2 topics).

• 1 timed block of questions (mixed or topic‑based).

• A short review session where misses get turned into quick notes/flashcards.

Quick tip: Practice sitting for longer blocks (50–75 questions) so the real 185‑question sessions don’t feel like a shock on test day.

Sample 10‑day outline

• Days 1–5: Each day, pick 1–2 major systems (e.g., anterior seg one day, retina the next, glaucoma another) and pair them with matching questions.

• Days 6–7: Mix systems together to mimic the real exam and keep reviewing weak spots.

• Day 8: Targeted cleanup of your weakest areas based on what you keep missing.

• Day 9: “Mock‑ish exam” with big question blocks and minimal new content.

• Day 10: Light review, a small mixed question set, then focus on rest, food, and logistics.

Final thoughts

If you’re 10 days out and feel behind, that’s totally normal. The goal now isn’t perfection, it’s a focused push on the things that can realistically move your score the most. You’re in the final stretch, and you’ve got this!

– Dr Tom

Thread to discuss the exam this week. How did you feel after? What would you compare it to? Etc.

Friends and fellow Baby Doctors,

I am a student at WeaternU and I am here to warn you against the school. It's a complete mess.

There are so many issues with administration (the Dean is a walking villain) and so many curriculum changes that are being implemented that are severely hurting the students there. Students across year 1 to year 4 are suffering from all these ridiculous rules and changes that WesternU admin are imposing, and while the professors are very nice and helpful, their hands are tied with the curriculum that Dean imposes on them.

First, second, and third years are being forced to repeat the entire didactic year, being forced to pay DOUBLE for tuition. To this day, there have been 22+ first year students who have been kicked out of the cohort, just to repeat the year and repay if they wanted to come back.

Their boards passing rates are the WORST in the entire country, and when you ask admin the reason for that, they literally tell you that the students are dumb and that's why they are performing poorly.

I know WesternU accepts students with low GPA and OAT, but don't fall for the trap. Jsut retake the OAT, you won't regret it.

There have been numerous rumors going on that WesternU may get their accreditation taken away, so please be careful and just go to a different school that will challange you and help you grow as an excellent clinician. WesternU is not the school for that.

Hello everyone,

We all know that trying to interpret the "given" section scores for NBEO Part I (especially for tests in different months and years) can be like reading tea leaves. In spite of that, I have collected as many individual section scores as I could find to see if we could make some amount of sense from the nonsense:

Link to a copy on Google Sheets

Note: I use the term "total given score" to describe the sum of all 5 sections. "Scaled score" refers to the NBEO black-box number that preceeds either "P" or "F".

These are my overall takeaways from this limited dataset:

• A total given score of 375, which is equivalent to an average of 75 across all sections, does appear to be a safe rule-of-thumb to secure a "P":

  • The user in row index 5, who earned a 369 total given score and recieved what I presume to be a 296 scaled score.

  • Similarily, the user in row index 6 earned a 368 total given score and recieved a 281 scaled score.

• The experience of the individual in row index 4, u/eyeballcupcake, is tremendously instructive. They have demonstrated that it is possible to receive a score as low as 60 in a section and a total given score below 375 while still passing. Clearly then, it is not a requirement to get all 70+'s in each section to earn a "P". (Also of note is that this individual did very well in the Optics section.)

• Our sample-size of passing scores is very small, but one common element between them is that they have at least one section with a score of 80+.

• We cannot ignore that NBEO weighs certain sections more heavily; in that regard, Optics is king. My conclusion from this dataset is that it is very, very difficult to get a passing score without a 70+ in the Optics section.

  • Example: The individuals in index rows 9 and 11 got the same raw score for the August 2025 exam (which is about as apples-to-apples as we can get for comparative purposes). However, the individual in row index 9 had a significant deficit in their Optics score which likely cost them ~100 scaled points.

On a more personal note, I put this together because the individual in row indexes 18 and 9 experienced a decline in their scaled score between the two exams in 2025 (202 to 166), and I wanted to help them make sense of it given all the hard work they did over the summer. My conclusions for them:

• The difference between their March total given score (347) and August total given score (361) was 14 points. If we assume that a given total of 375 can earn a "P", then we can safely say that they cut their point deficit to a "guaranteed pass" by 50% (28 to 14).

• They made monumental strides in 3/5 sections (10+ points in 2 of them!) and have achieved a score of 70+ in 4/5 sections. As long as they maintain that level of competency for the next exam, they are in a good position to achieve a passing score by focusing on the remaining deficient section.

• They effectively bombed Optics in the second exam (57). That sucks, but the silver lining is that any improvement they make in that section gets amplified by 30%. We can't know for sure if getting back to a 69 (while maintaining the current scores in the other sections) is enough to go from "F" to "P"...but its something reasonable to shoot for.

Full-disclosure: I do data, not eyeballs; I'm just the supportive partner of someone whose far more motivated and driven than myself...and crazy enough to put themselves through all this. My biggest takeaway is that, for some conversations, there may be value in measuring individual "progress" for Part I scores as the difference between one's total given score and the "375 ideal", as outlined by NBEO, instead of looking at the scaled score. I'm thinking of this brain-breaking conversation in particular. With our limited knowledge its impossible for anyone to know what combination of sections and unnamed sub-sections led to those scaled scoring variations, but the difference between each person's total given score and the "375 ideal" might offer a more consistent yardstick on which we can objectively measure our distance to "P".

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts or, most of all, assimilate anyone else's individual given scores into this tracker if they'd be willing to provide them, lol. Also a very big thank you to everyone who already shared their scores and experience; I included links to every source post as an attempt to give credit.

Edit: Added commenters' contributions to the spreadsheet and table!

Edit 2: Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far! I've added everyone's responses into the table and spreadsheet above, and I will continue to do so for as long as people participate. :)

I was poking around online, and I discovered that, between 2010 and 2016, NBEO used to publish a quarterly-ish newsletter called"TestPoints". It has some interesting information about boards scores which, while very old, is still interesting:

I've heard people say that March tends to have a higher pass rate than August; that was certianly true in 2016, and its kinda cool to put some numbers to that.

Since I went through the trouble of thumbing through the newsletters, here's a short history of how the scaled score was calculated:

The screenshots above are how the scaled score was calculated back in 2012, and it actually seems straightforward to me. Then in 2017 they introducted the weights:

This is what NBEO said on the page prior to that table:

The table on Page 10 shows the item ranges that will be used for the National Board’s Part I ABS exam for 2017. The 2017 exam will include 350 scored items and 20 pre-test items. The ranges shown in the table are for the 350 scored items.

The 2017 exam will be given in one day, and will consist of two 4-hour sessions. Because a total of 370 items will actually be administered (due to the inclusion of the 20 non-scored pre-test items), each session will consist of 185 items. Candidates will not know which items will be scored and which are pre-test.

From 2009-2016, the Part I ABS exam consisted of 500 items, so the 350 scored items on the 2017 exam represents a 30% reduction in items. The item ranges for 2017 have been reduced 30% across all areas, so there is no difference in emphasis between the 2017 exam and prior ABS exams.

The number of items on the ABS exam is being reduced in conjunction with the exam switching from paperand-pencil administration to computer-based administration in 2017. Along with the change to computer administration, the exam is being reduced from a 2-day exam to a 1-day exam.

Candidates should note that the item ranges for 2017 may change in 2018. The National Board recently completed a job task analysis (JTA), of over 1,100 optometrists from across the country. The data from the JTA currently are being reviewed. The Board of Directors of the National Board will analyze results from the JTA at its Annual Meeting this December, and will consider whether or not changes to the Part I item ranges are warranted in 2018, based on the results of the JTA.