Are you gearing up to take the real estate exam? Feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start? Well, you're in luck! In this blog post, I'll walk you through the exact strategies I used to pass my real estate exam in just four days. Yes, you read that right – four days!
Let's dive right in.
Now, first off, I did my class on zoom, which I don't necessarily recommend. While I loved the convenience of staying home, It was really hard for me to sometimes hear what the teacher was saying. And I really felt like as soon as the class ended, that actually was the START of my studying for the test. So if you give yourself four days after your class and you were super engaged and really retained all the information while you were in school, then you are going to be solid.
Tip #1 Listen To Your Director And Your Teacher.
Hopefully, the director will be coming in at the end of your class time and give you advice on what they think is the best and the fastest way to get ready for the test. If they don't, I highly recommend you going to them and saying, "Hey, What do you recommend is the quickest way for me to get ready for this exam?". I know this might seem straight forward but I think it is really easy to default into what feels more comfortable and easy instead of trusting the advice of experts. I heard several students talking after our lecture, stating plans that were everything OTHER than what was advised!
Tip #2 Forget the Flashcards; Think Quizes
This tip was the main advice given by our Director. While I would have found more emotional comfort in reading the textbook page by page, or making tons of flashcards, I really decided to just do nothing but get my hands on every single question that I could possibly do. Now, this wasn't even a matter of memorizing the questions. I was really going for the quantity, not necessarily the detailed memorization of everything. Meaning I would even look up the answers right away.
Quiz locations:
Back of every chapter of the textbook
Youtube practice videos
Practice books from school
The point is to not only learn the information, but also context of how they write their questions because guarantee when you go to take the test, you're going to think you know all these facts but then you're going to read a question that was worded in a way you've never seen before. It's a whole different skill set to have to learn how to take the test.
So remember that this real estate exam is not your time to become a master real estate agent. That's going to be the next part your journey starts, after you pass the test. What you need to do right now is just do whatever you need to do to pass that test and gather all the information you need. So yes, you're going to be learning a lot of vocabulary, but you cannot forget about the part of learning how to take a test. This involves learning how to read and interpret those questions.
Tip #3 Write things down.
Here is a strategy to help your brain memorize that is different than creating flashcards. While flashcards are quickly created to then use for memorization, this method involves mindfully writing to process concepts and vocabulary.
Taking pen to paper is incredibly beneficial for your brain to help you memorize. Stack on being present and mindful with everything you write makes this hack powerful. One of the ways I would create mindfulness around this was to make it pretty! I would use colored markers and create aesthetically pleasing charts. This allowed me to link everything together and see the bigger picture.
Tip #4 Improve your cognitive thinking.
Okay, so this is maybe coming from my wellness background as a Craniosacral practitioner. A lot of what I do is to help improve the nervous system. One aspect of this is that I do a lot of decompressing of the cranial plates. That to me has become a game changer in cognitive thinking. Now hear me out on this one.
You might hear in real estate school or on youtube, "If you really want it bad enough, you need to stay up all night and study and get this done." I'm a believer of working efficiently, not just pushing yourself. So I prioritize sleep. Another thing that I did was I would do cranial on myself. To put this into context: in the beginning of the two week real estate school, I hadn't really had to go to school in a long time, so I'm not going to lie. I was struggling so hard to pay attention. I was so disappointed in my ability to focus. When I was looking at the quizzes, I had to transfer a lot of answers over, and I was noticing that I could only really memorize four letters at a time. It was a very short sequence that I could memorize. After one day of a really intense, one to two hours of craniosacral on myself. The next day I was able to increase that to six letter sequences I could memorize. And the amount of distraction that I was having was reduced by 50%.
Do not underestimate the power of taking care of your body. That could be exercising the morning of the test, eating, sleep. Take care of yourself. That is going to make you really efficient in passing this test, even though you might be tempted to cram and not sleep for two days. It does not matter how much you've memorized if your brain doesn't work the day of the test.
Tip #5 Optimizing Your Time
Let's say though you want to find that balance between optimizing and being efficient in your studying yet also taking care of your body.
When it comes to studying, I would be spending, let's say, 8 hours at my desk studying the textbook and trying to memorize things. Guaranteed around 7 o'clock my brain would just shut down. I would catch myself staring at the page. I still wanted to squeeze out a little bit more study time. So what I would do then is I would switch primarily to video or audio. I'd be cooking dinner and listening to one of the videos in the background, or when I was just so exhausted, I would lay in bed and watch the video. And then after that, when I was even more exhausted, I would close my eyes right before bed and listen to the audio.
I find that for me, at least watching the videos and the audios is easier for my brain to handle new information than it is to read it on a text. Understanding the different ways that I receive information allowed me to squeeze out a few extra hours a day in my studying.
Tip #6 Utilizing Movement
Next tip is something that I actually didn't do till after my real estate class and I really wish that I had done a lot sooner. As I was sitting, staring at a textbook 12 hours a day for two and a half weeks, I was having so much back pain. Remember what I was saying earlier about taking care of your body?
I got a stand up desk with a treadmill and it has been a game changer. I got it as cheap as possible off Amazon. Really not that fancy of a setup and the walking has been amazing. It has allowed my posture to improve. And poor posture has huge detrimental effects to your body, to your brain fog, cognitive thinking, and fatigue, if you are in this forward head posture and hunched over, it creates compression at the bottom of your head into your neck area, which prevents blood flow, and the cerebrospinal fluid getting access to the rest of your body. So, posture is a huge thing!
I really recommend it. Not only that, but the motion and the bilateral stimulation of walking has been a total game changer as well in increasing memorization speed.
Tip#7 Stop Waisting Time
A tip on deciding, when you come across a vocabulary term, how much you need to worry about memorizing it. I like to think of it in three ways.
Is this a simple memory recall? Like a simple vocabulary word - one word and you just need to remember what that word means. A flashcard would work just fine in this situation.
Is this a core concept that you really need to understand the whole picture because it affects many other things? And it might require you to use some logical thinking when you're taking the test. In those situations I would dive deeper into the book, deeper into the videos when I'm studying those concepts and do more mindful writing/chart making.
Is this self explanatory? Does the word already kind of explain itself? Then don't even try to memorize it. Don't even make it into a flashcard. You'll figure it out the day of the test.
So yes, you could be extremely thorough and just try to memorize everything and turn everything into a flashcard. But again, we're going for speed here. We're trying to get the test done in four days. So really every time I came across a term, I would immediately categorize it and it would help me really just filter so many vocabulary words that I really didn't need to spend a lot of time and effort on.
Tip #8 Follow Test Guidelines
This tip might be the most important!
At least in Idaho, they provide the test "Content Outline". This tells you the percentage of each topic on the test. I spent 3 of my 4 days studying the highest percentage topics. For example, based on the pic above, spending a lot of time studying "Duties and Powers" that is only 5% of the test would be a huge waist! Base your studying off the highest percentage topics and you'll be studying very efficiently.
Alright, so I hope that helps. Just remember it's going to be crunch time and you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to feel like you can't do it. My favorite motto is "the only way is through." Just keep reminding yourself of all the progress you've made. All of the moments that you thought that you weren't going to make it and you did. You just got to keep going.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. I would also love to know any of your go to hacks for studying!
Take care.
p.s. If you are new to Real Estate, feel free to join my agent referral map!
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