How many PT's should I take?

ellen1999

How many PT's should I take? I am thinking between 20-30. Opinions on this amount?

cregorymoulton

I remember he said early in the curriculum that we should shoot for 40. but they should not be done one after the other as that is pointless. but spaced out for room for improvement. I'd say one every two weeks and then closer as test day nears.

Forever Addicted to Coffee

Sounds like a decent ball park to begin with. But I would encourage you to NOT let that one number dictate your studying in general--for example, 20 PTs taken under timed conditions with thorough blind review is generally better than than cramming in more by sacrificing your post-PT review.

In terms of scheduling these PTs: if you take 1 PT a week and can manage a great blind review and practice prior to your next PT, great. If you can manage 2 PTs a week without sacrificing the quality, great. For me, it came down to being honest about managing my studying and work schedule. During school, I barely managed 1 PT a week. Shortly after, I was comfortable with 2.

Also, recognize that there is a large variance among students in how many PTs it took to reach X score. Making things worse, we need to be skeptical of how people are reporting these numbers. For example, it's taken me 27 fully timed PTs to get my recent 171 on a PT (woo hoo!). But that's not counting the PTs I used up for drilling and practicing. I also repeated several PT sections. So really, how many PTs did I use up to get my most recent personal best score? Enough for me to be uncomfortable in saying X number of PTs got me to 171.