An ORE Part 1 study plan for 12, 8 and 4 weeks

The shape of every plan

Whatever its length, an ORE Part 1 study plan has three phases. The first covers every topic in both papers once. The second returns to the weakest of them with far more questions than notes. The third is mixed practice at exam pace, with full timed papers for both Paper A and Paper B. As the plan shortens, the phases keep roughly the same proportions and each one gets less time.

Two things decide how the phases are filled. The first is the syllabus: Paper A covers dental science and human disease, and Paper B covers aspects of clinical dentistry, including law and ethics and health and safety. The second is a first read on every subject. A plan built without the second is a plan built on a guess about your own weaknesses, and that guess tends to miss the subjects you avoid because you assume you know them.

Before week one

Count the weeks to your sitting on the ORE Part 1 exam dates page, then answer a mixed set across both papers and record a result for each subject. Rank the subjects from weakest to strongest. The provider publishes the topics each paper can include but no weighting by topic, so the ranking is set against the breadth of each topic rather than against a published share of the marks.

The 12 week plan

Twelve weeks gives two rounds of timed papers and room to return to the weakest topics. It is the shape that suits a candidate working clinically or otherwise employed, at around ten to fifteen hours a week.

The 8 week plan

Eight weeks means the first pass has to be faster and more selective. The compromise to make is depth on the narrow topics you already know, and the timed papers stay. Dropping them to buy more reading time is a common way for an eight-week plan to fail.

The 4 week plan

Four weeks is a plan for a candidate who has sat before, or who has recently been studying the same material. It assumes most of each day is available. It does not work as a first exposure to the syllabus, and a candidate in that position is usually better served by moving to a later sitting than by compressing the work.

Where the weeks are usually lost

Four patterns account for much of the time wasted in a study plan.

• Reading instead of answering. Reading feels like progress and produces recognition, which is not what a single best answer question asks for. Once a topic has been read once, further reading is worth less than the same time spent on questions and their explanations, such as the free ORE Part 1 practice questions, which give a rationale for every option.
• Revising strengths. Answering well feels better than answering badly, so candidates drift back to comfortable subjects. The ranking from your first read exists to overrule that instinct, and it needs checking weekly.
• Untimed practice only. Accuracy without pace is a different skill from the one the paper tests. Each paper allows about 54 seconds a question, and that pace has to be practised as well as known.
• Notes that are rewritten and never used. A second set of notes on the same topic is time spent producing something you will not read again. An error log you do read is worth more than a folder you do not.

The final week

The last week is for retrieval and logistics. Work through the error log, answer short mixed sets daily at full pace, and stop adding topics. Read the joining instructions the provider issues for your sitting properly, well before the night before, and check that your photographic identification matches the details the GDC holds. Candidates who arrive after the pre-exam announcements have started are refused entry, and the attempt still counts. The exam dates page counts the days to your sitting and estimates when results follow.

Sleep matters more in this week than any subject does. The papers are on two consecutive days, each three hours long, and fatigue on the second day costs marks.

On the days

The papers are computer based and sat at London test centres allocated by the provider. Treat each paper as a pacing problem as much as a knowledge one. At 54 seconds a question, a paper reaches question 50 at 45 minutes, question 100 at 1 hour 30 minutes and question 150 at 2 hours 15 minutes. A question that resists thirty seconds of thought is costing time that two other questions need.

The GDC and the provider do not publish whether wrong answers lose marks, or which on-screen tools the live exam offers, so read the candidate instructions for your sitting before deciding how to handle questions you are unsure of. On the evening between the papers, do not go back over the first one. Nothing can be changed, and the second paper is where the remaining marks are.

Adjusting the plan

A plan is a hypothesis about where your time should go, and the timed papers are what test it. Rebuild it when the evidence changes: after the first read, after each timed paper, and whenever a week is lost to work or illness. Rebuilding means moving topics, and it cannot mean adding hours that do not exist.

The preparation guide explains the method behind these plans, and the free ORE Part 1 mock test runs 25 questions at the real pace. ORE Ready builds the plan itself from your sitting date and a free diagnostic, and recalculates the weekly targets whenever the date or your available hours change.