I'm finishing my dietetic internship at the end of June and trying to figure out optimal timing to sit the CDR exam. My program director says within 3 months but some cohort members are pushing to 4-5 months and I'm not sure which approach is smarter.
I've been doing 1 hour of prep daily for 6 weeks using the Academy Study Kit and scoring 65-70% on practice exams. Nutrition assessment and intervention feel solid but food service management is rough - my internship rotation there was only 6 weeks.
The 2023 restructure put more emphasis on food and nutrition sciences than the previous version. Biochemistry questions are more in-depth than my supervisors warned me about and I'm dropping 10-15% of points there specifically.
For people who've taken the updated exam - are MNT condition-specific questions as scenario-heavy as the practice materials suggest? The case study format takes me way longer per question than I planned for.
MNT questions are very scenario-based now. I had a lot of ADIME format questions where you identify the nutrition diagnosis from a case description - budget about 90 seconds per question.
Take it within 3 months of finishing, no question. The material fades faster than you think and you'll still be in study mode coming out of the program.
Food service management was my weak spot too. Three dedicated weeks on just that domain moved me from 58% to 74% on practice sets. It's about 12% of the exam so don't skip it.
I scored 65% on practice consistently and still passed the real exam. The CDR is known to be slightly easier than the Academy practice kit, so don't panic if your scores are borderline.