I am pleased to announce that I have also passed the Oct 25th NPTE. I could not curtail my excitement when I saw the word ‘PASSED’. It’s a dream come true for me. It has been a long and tough journey (becomes tougher when you are a foreign trained physical therapist). I would thank my husband, who is the co-author of my success story. He is the pillar of my strength and ensured that I followed my study schedule of 7-8 hours daily. He had no doubt that I can achieve this milestone. Credit for my achievement also goes to my entire family, especially, my brother,who motivated me to work harder.I would say that, this day would not have been possible without Dr Bhupinder Singh and his NPTE Final Frontier team. I started preparing for the exam in May, 2017 and to ensure that I pass the exam, I enrolled in his classes in August, 2017. It was my first attempt and when I talked to Dr. Singh before joining, he mentioned that the pass rate for foreign-trained PT’s is less than 30 percent, and I will needto work hard for the next few weeks to achieve my NPTE dream. He asked me my target score and the rest is history. I want to thank NPTE Final Frontier, especially my licensed study partner Akanksha, and the whole team.I would like to use this post to motivate people and share my study strategies. I have read almost entire O’Sullivan, Magee, parts of Kisner and Therapy Ed books for my preparation and also I strictly followed the NPTE 75 day Final Frontier timetable. I attended all the live classes online, on Saturday morning and Thursday evenings. Dr. Singh explained all the topics as concepts. I was not confident in MSK, so I followed his three step approach. Read MSK assignments, read special tests from my special test PowerPoint, and then open Kisner to read interventions. PNF was explained well in class (never understood it before) and I made a lot of tables forall Neuro scales. Cardiopulmonary was the easiest and all students in the class made a cardio 21 assignment which helped clear key concepts. My favorite part of the classes was gait and non-systems. Dr. Singh explained it like no one else could. He used bones and models of amputee legs to explain gait deviations and I will never forget his rationales. All classes were recorded and I listened to them at least twice. I remembered all his words during the exam (active passive insufficiency, spinal mobs, even his wife jokes on standard deviations, fit vs unfit men, concurrent validity).I always use to study alone and Dr. Singh supported the study style but supplemented it with a licensed study partner Akanksha. She helped me review all important concepts. She motivated me to go beyond my limits; she held me strong in my low days. I took one practice at the end of each phase and gotdecent scores in all exams. I spent two days reviewing the rationales and discussed the doubts with Dr. Singh in my one on one session. Every one on one session, we talked about the importance of studying from the textbooks and not just therapy Ed. Dr. Singh predicted a score of 720 and above. I thought hewas joking, I had seen pics of 700 plus people and my profile was not even close to them. I discussed with Akanksha and she arranged a session with Dr. Singh and I on Oct 23 at 8.00 pm. He conducted a viva asking a bunch of hard questions and I felt so confident. I was excited to take the exam and not nervous. I started dreaming big and the result is in front of you all, I ended up getting 737/800.
For anyone who is planning to take the exam, please consider talking to Dr. Singh. He is one of a kind. I have never seen an instructor with such knowledge and calmness. His patience and dedication is exemplary and doesn’t seem to be tired even after a big 3 hour class on spinal mobs (although I do thinkhe should drink water during breaks). I can’t say enough about the whole team. Rekha was always there managing WhatsApp group ( a 24 hour helpline). Thanks to Mini for managing google classroom and posting all assignments and solutions on time. I feel humbled by this achievement and will be willing tocontinue the Final Frontier philosophy of helping the next batch. Feel free to reach out and ask any questions.