So use images and if you like using images when you study, that's our specialty at Zuku. Okay. But you can also turbocharge your study with images in your own study. You can put it in your notes. The Internet makes it very easy to find good images to help you to remember stuff. So the structure of this test is multiple choice questions. There's 360 of them, and it takes all day. Okay. You get your questions 60 questions at a time in six blocks. Each block you have about an hour, a little bit more than an hour. So on average, that's about one minute per question. But when you're taking your test, I mean, if you want to spend 45 minutes on one chicken question, you could do that. But I don't recommend it. Okay. On the day you take your test. The ICVA, the people that write the NAVLE® say you will see anywhere between 10 and 20% of questions with images or some sort of diagram or something like that. Okay. In Zuku, over a third of all of our questions and all of our notes and all of our videos are packed with images to help you remember. Okay? On the day you take your test, 60 of those questions do not count. Randomly scattered throughout the entire test day on every single test block you take some questions will not count. Those questions are being evaluated to see if they're good enough statistically and clinically to be included in a future NAVLE® where they count. But on your test, they won't. You will not know which questions, they call these validation questions, you won't know which ones thoe are. Okay? So the correct strategy is just treat every single question as if it counts but remember, they're only going to grade you on 300. Okay. So if you get like three weird questions about fish, you know what, maybe some of those are validation questions. It's not worth worrying about. Just answer as best you can and if you don't know how to answer guess. And in a minute, we'll talk about how to guess strategically to improve your odds of getting a question right, even if you're not sure. Okay. And that's a super important habit to build as you study. The more you practice that as you study. The better you'll be on the day you take your test. So we'll do that in a few minutes. So when you walk in to the test center to take your test, they allot you 45 minutes of break time. And you can use your breaks throughout the day a little bit at a time, big chunk, whatever you want. But, once you start a block of 60 questions, that's not the time to raise your hand and say man, I got to go to tinkle, I've got to go to the bathroom. You take your breaks in between blocks of questions. Okay? The good news is, by the time you take your NAVLE® most of you people are going to be very good test takers. Maybe you're not going to get 100, which is doesn't matter. You don't need 100, but you're going to be pretty good at taking these tests. And so if you finish a 60 question test in less than 65 minutes, they take your unused time and they give it to you and they add it to your break time. You're likely going to have plenty of break time. So take your breaks. Studies of decision fatigue in adult learning show really clearly, if we don't take breaks, we don't perform as well. So take some breaks. You know, go to your locker, get a little snack, have a caffeine have some coffee or tea, go to the bathroom, whatever it is. Whatever works for you. Don't run to your locker and try to look something up or look it up on your phone. That's not that's not a break. Okay. Take a break. You'll feel better. You perform better. If you are having a hard time. Sometimes people get sick in the middle of the test. They get anxiety. Maybe they have an asthma attack. You know, Covid is a thing. But if you are feeling really in trouble and really ill in the middle of a timed test yes, you can raise your hand and get help from the proctor. And if they have to, they'll stop the clock on your test. But don't do that lightly. You do that if you're feeling really, really sick. So i'll give you an example. When year a guy called us up, he's like doc, I had a really bad day on test day. I asked him, Well, what happened? And he said, Well, you know what, I had food poisoning that day and I threw up on my keyboard in the middle of my NAVLE®. They let him take a break. And I was thinking about how bad that must have been for him, how bad he must have felt. He's throwing up on the keyboard. What if you're the person sitting next to the guy that's throwing up on his keyboard? I'd be like, my God, my God, this is going to be a hard test. But that's just, it really happened, but that's just an example if you're feeling really ill, yes, get help. You don't have to suffer. But in general, don't take breaks that are trivial. Like, oh, I got to go peepee in the middle of your test. Do that in in between the blocks. Okay. 

So here's the structure of the exam. The test is broken down by species and the most important species get the most points. So help me out everybody, tell me in chat. On a letter grade scale. A, B, C, D or E. What letter grade do you need to pass your NAVLE® and become a licensed veterinarian in North America? You need an A, a B., a C, or a D? What do you guys think? There it is. Some people are more optimistic than others. All right. Good job. You basic, so the ICVA doesn't tell anybody exactly how many questions you got right because it varies a little bit year to year depending on, you know how people do and what the questions how the questions go. But basically you need a C. You need a C to pass NAVLE®, let's call it 70 to 75% right. Okay. So check this out, everybody. Over three quarters of all the points that count on your NAVLE® day are in only four species. Dog, cat or cow. If you study those four first, you're studying almost enough to pass through NAVLE® right there. Now you're going to miss some of those questions. So, sure, let's study pigs some. Let's study exotics some. Let's study cross species or cervids or things like that. But if you're feeling fresh, if you have the time if it's early in your studies, get the big stuff first and get that locked in. That's also useful because that's the same stuff you want to know for real life clinics. Okay. You don't have to know everything. But get a good foothold on the biggies. Okay. Where would I invest my time? I mean, for me, I think bovine and small ruminants go together so I usually study those together. Also, bovine, uh, sheep and goats are kind of fun to work on, so that's kind of good to study. People get stressed out about the little categories especially pigs. You know, you don't have to be a chicken expert to pass your NAVLE®. You can miss all six of those questions on chickens and still pass your NAVLE®. Okay. But if you want my advice, if they can only ask you six questions on chickens, I guarantee you they're going to ask you about the most important big problems in chickens first. So why not say, look, I'm not going to become a chicken expert tomorrow, but I'm at least going to tune up on 4 or 5 of the biggest chicken diseases and call that good. You know what are going to study? Marek's maybe, Newcastle, influenza, I don't know, avian bronchitis, Salmonella, one of those. Camelids and cervids. I mean, I'm a former public health guy. I'm here to tell you, if you get a question about if you see the word deer on your NAVLE®, what's the only big disease we really care about in deer? What, tell me in chat everybody. Hello, yeah. Dr. Santos. Dr. Salazar. Chronic wasting disease. Okay. I mean, it could be other things. You know deer can get epizo, epizootic hemorrhagic disease. They can get TB. But, man, at least consider the biggies and if that's what one of your other take home's about NAVLE® besides using images to be like memory anchors, the other one I would tell you is stick to the big stuff. Triage the information the same way as we triage cases. Learn the big stuff first. Reptiles. I mean, if you see the word iguana on your on your test and it's a limping iguana or he's got like a pathologic fracture in one of his legs because he's got little paper thin bird bones. Or what I would see in practice is an iguana would show up with a big swollen Popeye jaw and it's kind of sideways and it's all swollen and soft. It's all the same thing in iguanas. What's the big metabolic disease we think about in iguanas? Yeah. Metabolic bone disease. Very good. Yeah. Dr. Redness. Dr. Guy. Yeah. You think about metabolic bone disease. Nutritional, secondary hypoparathyroidism. Basically a dietary problem. If you get that close you're almost done. If they say, what do you do about it? It's like supplement, calcium, grow lights, vitamin d, stuff like that. In my personal experience, by the time they got that big, dystrophic jaw or they got like kyphosis of the spine like spinal changes. Not good. Okay. You can have a couple of fish questions on your NAVLE®. You don't have to be a fish expert. If you do Zuku just do the fish questions in Zuku. We have Dr. Aquaman himself, Dr. Roy Yanong from University of Florida who helped us develop our fish material. You can do that, you can do anything they throw it. Okay. But if you miss the three fish questions, you're probably okay. Just don't don't miss you know, the 50% of the points that count in dog and cat. 

All right. Here's the latest news. Pass rates. It's not a surprise to anybody now, but pass rates have been dropping for the last 5 or 8 years in the NAVLE®. Okay. And if we looked at the first attempt pass rates for what they call criterion students, that's first attempt on the test for students at an AVMA accredited veterinary school. Okay. Those first attempt pass rates were 88% between fall of 19 and spring of 2020. Okay. So, you know, nearly 9% not bad. You might have looked at that back then and say, hey, man, heck, my study it's going to be easy right? Nine out of ten. I mean, he looks confident, right? That's a dental student. All respect. Look what happened then. The next testing year was fall of 20' to spring of 21'. Well, what happened between fall of 20' and spring of 21'. That's the first opening salvo of the year of the pandemic and it went for 4 years. Pass, first ten pass rates dropped 1%. Eh. Whatever. Okay, fine. Next year the biggest single year drop we ever saw up until that point, fall of 21' to 22', 3% drop in pass rates. Most people said it must be the pandemic. Boom. The next biggest drop was a 7% drop in only one year. These were students who went to vet school in the teeth of the pandemic. It was harder to be a good student. It was harder to be a good professor. That's a big drop. That's the biggest drop we've ever seen in pass rates on the NAVLE®. Basically, in a two year period, we saw a 10% drop. That's huge. This just happened in late November. Here's the most recent pass rates that are available. We had a slight increase. It's not quite 80%. It's more like 79 point something. But still right now, we're hovering around 80% pass rate for first attempt for senior students at accredited schools on their first attempt. I think this is probably the new normal. I think this is what we're going to be seeing from now on. Because even though the pandemic is kind of in the rearview mirror there's been a lot more new schools opening up. We've got a lot more people taking this test. People aren't maybe necessarily as ready as they want to be. If you add more people to the pot, you're going to see something like this. I think this is what we can expect going forward is roughly eight out of ten pass rate on the first attempt. If you don't pass in your first attempt, it's not the end of the world. In fact, I think two weeks from now I'm going to do a talk on how to retake the NAVLE®. So if you didn't succeed on the first attempt, we'll have a retake talk on what do you do on your next attempt? It does happen. Okay. So should you look at that and you say, my God, this could be terrible. I should freak out? No, you shouldn't. You just spent the last 3 or 4 years becoming a really good test taker This to me is just information to sock it away and say this is my motivation to be serious and professional and commit myself to learning the information. You don't have to learn everything and the stuff you want to learn anyway is what you want to know for clinics that'll help you on NAVLE®. Let's be motivated by clinics. 

Some new news starting next fall for the first time NAVLE® is going from two windows a year to three windows a year. Okay. So the first window for the NAVLE® testing cycle for the three times a year is going to start in mid-October next year, and it'll go through mid-November. Okay. This is the first time I've ever done it and part of the reason is there's just more people taking the test. Nearly 10,000 people take this test a year now. I'll answer some questions about this. We might take a break to answer some questions in a moment. But basically people are getting a little worried. They're like, my God, I won't have enough time to study in my personal opinion, it's not like that. In my personal opinion, this is actually a good thing. This gives you multiple opportunities now to take the test in a way that fits your calendar a little better. If you don't have success in your first attempt you've got two more attempts maybe before your next job starts. It's better to have more opportunities, in my personal opinion. And people might say, my god, it's January. What if I don't have enough time to get ready by October? I have news for you. There's never enough time to learn it all. You're not going to learn at all. And that's okay. You don't need to learn at all. You just need to pass. Okay. So, there's plenty of time to prepare for this test if you're going to take it in October. Okay. Remember, you don't need 100. Okay. Let me just check my questions. See what we got. Remember, guys, if you would, if you put your questions in the Q&A, it's a little bit easier for me to keep track. So let's see. No questions in chat. Any questions in Q&A? I don't see any, but I don't think I'm seeing everything. There we go. Yeah. Here we go. All right. All right, Doctor Perez, I'll catch your question at the very end. We got a question about the test called the BCSE. All right. Good job, everybody. Let's keep moving then. Oh. A good question from Dr. Sara Mueller. What's the application deadline for the new test dates? The short answer is, go to the ICVA website and they'll have the most accurate information. What it used to be when the test was November 15th to December 15th the deadline was August 1st. With the first window in October 15th, I'm going to assume that the application deadline will be sometime in July of 2025. Okay. That's a great question. Thank you. Okay.