For years Advantage Learn has been helping parents and students on their journey of navigating the NBTs. For the majority of people, this is their first time coming across them. In this post I will lay out the key dates with advice on the best path to take to ensure NBT success.

3rd April

This is the date that the NBT registrations go live! It’s an important date to have in your diary as you want to make sure that you get a date which works for you. There are some important things to consider when you are choosing your date.

  1. Does it clash with anything at school?
  2. Make sure that your calendar is free on the day of your test. You can move your NBT dates with the NBT organisation but you do not want to go through that process, keep your life simplified and avoid the stress of switching test dates!

  3. Avoid school exam times.
  4. It is important that when you go to your NBT you are not stressed and tired as it requires 6 hours of focus (3 for the AQL and 3 for the MAT) and it is not easy. Also this test can make or break your University application so give it the space it deserves!

  5. Do not book it at the end of a holiday.
  6. A lot of students sit the NBT during the June/July holidays. I highly recommend that if you choose to do this that you do it after 1 week of holidays only. If you do it at the end of this holiday period you will either be stressing about the test all holiday, or you will be relaxing and your brain will not be prepared when it comes to taking the test. If you want to book it in your holidays, book it for the end of the first week so that you can use the rest of the holiday to relax, knowing you have your final term ahead of you and your Matric exams.

  7. Book early if you are doing Medicine or a competitive degree programme.
  8. Universities will get back to you very quickly once your NBT is completed. As University places are very competitive, make sure you do your test early so that your place is secured and you can then focus on your Matric year.

Plan your NBT study timetable

Our online Full preparation course should take 2 weeks to complete in students extra time (20 hours) and our AQL only course is 12 hours. Both of these include full Mock exams which we highly recommend students try 1 week before their NBT test, and that they complete it in one sitting, just like the NBT. This will mean that the skills they have learnt are fresh to them and they have plenty of rest time before the test 1 week later.

If you are planning on attending an NBT workshop then try to do this ideally 1 week before the NBT test, or 2 weeks if 1 isn’t possible. Students who come to the workshop close to their NBT test date always tell us that it was the best time to attend the workshop as everything is fresh in their minds when they come to sitting the tests.

*If you are attending a workshop earlier than the recommended 1-2 weeks in advance of your test date, do not panic, remember that you have access to the online content. Provided you use the online course to revise in the week leading up to your test you should achieve the same success as those attending workshops 1-2 weeks before their tests.

Relax and wait patiently

The results from your tests are available to Universities 3 weeks after you complete them, and then you can see them 4 weeks afterwards by logging into your profile on the NBT website. A full table of when the results are available can be found here.

After you get your results it is worth contacting your University you have applied to. Make sure they have got your results so they can make a decision on your application. In some cases your University may contact you before your results are available telling you if you have been successful or not.

Good luck!

From everyone here at Advantage Learn, we wish you the best of luck with the NBTs. Try not to be stressed by them; they are tough tests but with the right preparation you can succeed. If you have any questions or want to talk to someone about the NBTs then chat to use using the chat icon in the corner or pick up the phone and give us a call, we are here to help.

This article was originally published on 19 Mar 2018

About the author
Adam Kinder

Online learning manager at Advantagelearn.com. I help manage our systems to provide the best online learning experience for our Students. Besides that I am a passionate Mathematician and enjoy solving students questions on our site.

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