"Bootcamp nbde" — how important is this for the NBDE exam?

Quick data point: I spent 4 weeks studying, 2-3 hours a day, and passed with a 73%.

The section on nbde exam took me the longest to feel confident about. Eventually I just drilled practice questions until I could answer them without hesitation.

What testing center did you end up booking? Some of them have much shorter wait times than others right now.

For what it's worth from someone who's been through it:

The NBDE is one of those exams where the practice tests really do prepare you well. The style of questioning is pretty consistent. If you're comfortable with "bootcamp nbde" material under timed conditions, you'll be fine.

The one thing I'd add: read the question stems very carefully. They sometimes add a qualifier that completely changes the right answer and it's easy to miss when you're going fast.

Also check whether you need to schedule the exam in advance — some testing centers book up 2-3 weeks out.

The advice about understanding why wrong answers are wrong — not just memorizing right ones — is genuinely the best NBDE advice in this thread. Rebuilt my prep around that and it made a real difference.

Coming back to this thread — just passed my NBDE yesterday. Everything about the nbde practice test section is accurate. For anyone still studying, the nbde cert was the closest thing to the real exam I found.

I was in the same boat studying for NBDE while working full-time, so I totally get the struggle. Bootcamp NBDE is definitely worth your time. I'd squeeze in 20-30 minute sessions during lunch breaks and it made a huge difference. The spaced repetition kept things sticky without requiring big blocks of time I just didn't have.

As for weight on the actual exam, it's hard to pin down exact percentages but the topics it drills show up enough that skipping it wasn't really an option for me. I also found that pairing Bootcamp with targeted question banks helped a lot. If you haven't already, working through nbde/questions/oral surgery questions specifically filled in gaps I didn't even know I had. You don't need to go deep on everything at once, just stay consistent and trust the process.

I'm in the same boat honestly. Just hit a 74% on my last Bootcamp nbde practice block which felt like a turning point after weeks of grinding. I'm planning to sit in late August so I've been laser focused on high yield stuff, and oral surgery keeps showing up way more than I expected — I actually found the nbde/questions/oral surgery section super helpful for drilling those concepts specifically. It's not something I expected to matter this much.

From what I can tell it's definitely worth your time. The practice tests really do reflect what shows up, so if you're seeing it constantly that's your sign to dig in. Didn't think I'd be spending this much time on it but here we are.