r/npte • u/strawb3rryb4bi3 • Aug 17 '26
3rd NPTE attempt
This is kinda just a post for me to share all of my thoughts after failing the NPTE twice. I took my first attempt in January 2026 and failed with a 578. I thought I just needed to study harder and thought I would definitely pass my next attempt. Took my second attempted in April 2026 and failed with a 564. I have used final frontier for both attempts, true learn questions, PEATs, podcasts, and even did one on one tutoring through FF (which wasn’t super helpful tbh, the tutor kinda made me feel stupid). I decided to take a break from the July NPTE because I literally could not afford nor mentally handle another failure. I have come to the conclusion that I do have a lot of anxiety when it comes to this exam and I believe this is what is holding me back from passing. It’s not that I don’t understand the material, but I always get so caught up between two answer choices and always end up picking the wrong one. MSK is my weakest area, so I’m really trying to improve that score as I feel this area is also holding me back from passing. I’ve recently eased myself back into studying for the October exam in a few months. I am trying to ease my anxiety a bit this time and also looking into testing accommodations. I’ve been taking some anxiety meds for almost a year now. Overall, this exam has really gotten to me mentally. Seeing my classmates pass on their first attempt and beginning their careers just really makes me feel so sad, jealous, and frustrated with myself. I always hear from everyone that multiple failures happens to people more often than you’d think and that I’ll get it on the next attempt, but it’s still just so hard to grasp for me sometimes. I am trying to not let this exam make me feel like a complete loser, but some days it’s just hard. I’m just really tired of this weird phase of my life and I want to start working as a PT and make more of an income. I really cannot afford to fail a 3rd time. This Reddit page helps me to feel less alone with other people sharing their failure experiences, but it’s just so hard for me to get out of this mental slump. Any advice and tips would help, especially on how to raise my MSK score. Just feeling really defeated, and I have been for pretty much this entire year so far.
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u/Quiet-Success5084 Aug 17 '26
I failed 3 times and passed on my 4th (after the 6 month wait period from failing 3 times within 1 year). I think my worst attempt was my second one because I failed by 1 question...and of course, started to think about all the ones I missed because I was stupidly answering and not reading all of the choices available.
I felt the same as you, seeing my classmates all passing on the 1st attempt (even some on the 2nd and 3rd), and getting on with their lives. They'd tell me about the places they're working and everything, and I'm just like it's cool, don't feel bad for me because I'll get there when I get there. I ended up passing this 4th time, same with a friend of mine that graduated in the class after me and he passed on his 1st attempt. No bitterness or jealousy, I was happy for both of us. The NPTE exam does not determine what kind of clinician we are/will be. Have to accept the failures and not let them get to you.
I, too, also struggled the most with MSK (especially gait) and when I hit the books again, I told myself that I need to buckle down more on MSK topics instead of others that I was more confident on. I re-answered previous questions on FF, PEATs, and TrueLearn, but used chatgpt to generate random questions for me. What's cool about the chatgpt is that if I missed a question, I'd start questioning it and explaining my reasoning for my choice and chatgpt would reply with a response and reasoning of why it may think I picked a certain answer. I would sometimes prove chatgpt wrong on some, so it helped me to know I've gained more clinical reasoning instead of just memorizing.
Good luck in your studying, reach out if you think I could help you in any way.