How Brian Passed the INBDE while Balancing School and Family

As a father of three young kids with a wife who works, dental school has been a balancing act. The INDBE was no different. The first thing I needed to do was trust that my hard work over the last four years gave me an excellent foundation for this exam. I guess my school was an integral part of that foundation too. But to draw everything together, I knew I needed a solid prep program. Bootcamp was the easy choice for me.

I began to study in the end of August my senior year with plans to sit the exam in November. I set my date and purchased the three month plan from Bootcamp. This would hopefully give me the motivation I needed to get started. However, I am a procrastinator. I dipped my toe in the water by watching a few videos and looking over the study schedules. I naturally gravitated towards the questions and only the questions. The feedback from each question was great. The marking system was very helpful as well. We have clinic from about 7-5pm during the week. After getting my kids to bed, I would do as many questions as I could before bed. I build up endurance and was able to do more and more questions each day. By the end, I would do 100 questions without breaking a sweat. I used the marking system to triage the questions into two piles; those I knew and those I didn’t. I would try to keep my “red” questions low and made it a priority to keep reviewing the ones I missed. I loved how I could use the app seamlessly between laptop and phone. Volume and repetition are key, at least for me.

Day One: My test days were back-to-back. The first day, I cruised through the sections like crazy. No breaks, no stops. This was my endurance carrying me along. The interface at the testing center was very similar to that of Bootcamp. I had some trouble with the image quality (photos and radiographs) on test day but nothing major. I was done by lunchtime on day one.

Day Two: The next day was about the same. I slowed down a little bit and took more time to familiarize myself with each case. Overall I left feeling pretty good and definitely glad it was over.

Naturally, doubt set I as I awaited my results. Questions like “did I study enough?” and “should I have sped through the test like that?” plagued my thoughts for about a month. The stress was washed away when I saw that I passed. The INDBE is not an easy exam but Bootcamp helped my to conquer it.