Goodbye to Pearson Vue

The Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers and Salespersons has said, “So long and thanks for all the fish!” to Pearson Vue yesterday.

That is correct as of April 1st, 2016 PSI Services LLC will be the new testing service for Real Estate Exams here in the state of Massachusetts. As this is breaking news the board is not giving us any details about the transition just yet.

The notice was posted on the Pearson Vue website yesterday.

Pearson Vue Notice

According to the Pearson Vue website:

As of March 15, 2016, Real Estate applicants will be able to schedule examinations with PSI Services LLC, for examinations, on or after April 1, 2016. Additional information can be found at the following web site on or around March 15th: psiexams.com

I am encouraging all of our broker and salesperson students that have already completed their prelicensing course, and not taken the real estate exam yet, to do so ASAP to avoid any delays in getting their license.

As word of the transition spreads I am sure that Pearson Vue will be swamped with students trying to take their test before April 1st so I would call Pearson Vue today and schedule the next available exam you can. Here is the number too make an exam reservation (800)274-0501.

You can be sure that we are going to be ferreting out all the details of this process as they unfold and informing you each step of the way.

Here is how you can help us. We are crafting a email to the Director of the Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers and Salespersons about this transition and would love to include your questions and feedback. If you have specific questions about the transition please post them below. As we get the answers to the questions we will detail them here so everyone gets the benefit of the information.

Massachusetts Real Estate Salesperson Prelicense Requirements

This video explains all the requirements for taking the 40 hour Salesperson’s Prelicense class and taking the Prelicense Examination. People interested in getting a real estate agents license in Massachusetts should go to http://baystateacademy.net and sign up for our industry updates for more detailed information.

Massachusetts Real Estate Prelicense Exam Tutorial

The Real Estate Exam in Massachusetts can be confusing but only because of the volume of real estate terms that need to be learned by the students. When I am teaching, about halfway through the first day, students will ask if they really need to know everything that we are covering for the test. I wish that I could tell them that they only need to know a few terms but that is not the case. The test covers over 1200 terms. Which can seem intimidating at first but once we get familiar with the basics things more along quite nicely.

I am sure that most Real Estate Trainers would agree that the only way you are going to pass the exam is to know the vocabulary. But how should the students go about learning the terms is the question?

I teach a technique that I call pointing the test. The exam is made up of 135 questions. There are 85 questions on the general portion of the test and 50 questions of the state portion of the exam. The students have 4 hours to complete the exam and they only need a 70% on each portion of the test to pass.

It is important to note that all of the questions are not worth the same point value but the student will not be aware of which questions are worth more points on the test. This sounds like we are going in circles until you realize that the test stresses particular subject areas.

If you go to the Pearson Vue Website and download the content outline of the test you will discover that some of the subject areas have substantially more questions than others. In talking with student both before and after their exam I have noticed a pattern.

Students that concentrated their studying on the subject areas that had more questions got higher scores on the test. I know this might sound obvious but you would be surprised how many students start studying for the test with out any focus.

So it should come as no big shock to hear that focused studying is the first part of the process that I call pointing the test. The second part of the process has to do with how the students actually take the exam. Here are the rules of the second part:

On your first pass through the exam read all of the questions in detail. Then answer all of the vocab questions that you feel confident about first and skip all the hard vocab and math questions.
On your second pass through the exam answer just the hard vocab questions. If you do not know the answer try to guess the best that you can by eliminated 1 or 2 of the choices. Please remember to answer all of the questions as blank answers are always marked incorrect.
On your third pass through the exam answer all of the math questions.

The reason that I suggest this Pointing the Test method is that it focuses the student on getting as many points as possible as fast as possible. This is important because often times a students first guess/thought about a question is the correct answer. The other benefit is that the student is reading all of the questions on the test before answering the hardest questions. Many of the description to questions on the test will give answers to other questions. This gives the best chance to get the points from those harder questions. And finally we come to the math questions. Of all the questions on the test the math questions cause more fear and dread than all the others combined. You will be happy to hear that only 10% of the questions on the test will be math questions. So if you leave these question until the end you will not be so flustered by the math that you get easy vocab questions wrong.

That is it for my suggestions try them out and let me know what you think in the comments bellow.