My 8-week ADEX study schedule (free resources only)

What do you think about condensing this to 4-5 weeks if I can do 2-3 hours per day? I have a test date that's sooner than I'd like and trying to figure out if I can make it work.

The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a ADEX deck with about 200 cards covering all the key terms and formulas. Doing 20 cards/day during my lunch break added up faster than I expected.

Great breakdown. One thing I'd add to Week 1: look at the score breakdown from your baseline practice test — not just the overall score. Most ADEX exams are weighted by domain, and knowing which domains carry more weight changes how you allocate study time.

This is gold. Saving and sharing with my study group. The "stop studying 24 hours before" advice is underrated — I bombed an exam once because I crammed until midnight and couldn't think straight in the morning.

One thing that made a huge difference for me was treating the patient case section like a separate exam entirely. I spent weeks drilling periodontal staging and grading — like, I could recite the criteria in my sleep — but I kept freezing during cases because I wasn't practicing the actual decision-making workflow. What helped was writing out a mini "case protocol" on a notecard: chief complaint → medical history flags → probe readings → radiographic bone loss → staging → grading → treatment plan. Ran through that sequence on every practice case until it was automatic.

Also, don't sleep on the infection control and OSHA stuff even if it feels like common sense. That content shows up more than people expect, and the questions are worded in weirdly specific ways that trip you up if you've just skimmed it. I used the adex dental exam practice questions to figure out exactly which topics I was weak on, then went back to the actual CDC guidelines rather than just review books — primary sources caught a few things that were slightly off in my notes.

Last thing: build in one full "case day" per week where you do nothing but case studies, no isolated flashcards. Your schedule is solid, but compartmentalizing by topic can make the case section feel harder than it is. Integration practice is what closes that gap.