How to Pass Your State Licensing Exam the First Time

Studying to Pass Your State Exam

You are here to pass your state examination. We are here to help!

We've been at this a long time. If you have been having trouble or feel overwhelmed, or just want to know what has helped students before you, consider these study suggestions.

Study Tip 1 - Know your goal.

Before you can be an agent you need to pass your exam from the state with a 70% or better. Passing our course requires a course completion exam with the same score.

Your study material is divided into two sections: insurance basics and state law. Most people need 30-40 hours of diligent study to pass the state license exams. If your state has a minimum hour requirement, your course will clearly show you how many hours you must log before we can provide your course completion certificate.

Your individual needs will vary. If you spread your studying over several weeks it may take considerably longer to master the material as you will have forgotten much of what you learned at the beginning and need to relearn the material.

Study Tip 2 - If you learned it yesterday, review it today.

Research shows that most students who read, watch, or listen to an educational presentation will have forgotten 50-80% of what they learned by the next day if they don't review the information.

However, as little as ten minutes of review within 24 hours can reinforce that information enough that near complete retention can be achieved.

For our students, that means that if you are studying four to six hours a day, you should be spending 40-60 minutes the next day reviewing what you just learned (in addition to any new material you take on)!

Study Tip 3 - Use tests to test your knowledge, not to learn the material.

This is the single most common mistake our students make! If you finish studying for a week and want to know where you're at, take a practice test or two to find out. If you get a 50% on those tests, the solution isn't taking ten more tests, the solution is going back and studying the course material.

Try as we might to create test questions, all of our tests are based on a finite number of total questions. When students take a test for the tenth or fifteenth time, it is likely they will be scoring higher simply because they have become familiar with the actual test questions.

Study Tip 4 - Take advantage of the guarantee exam.

The guarantee exam is like a practice exam but with two important differences. First, you need an 85% or higher to pass the guarantee exam. Second, a guarantee exam has unique questions that you won't have seen before while taking practice tests.

If you didn't score as high as you'd like on a practice test, went back to the book, and aced your second practice test, try your hand at the guarantee exam. Not only will you get the confidence you need to take the state exam, you'll have qualified for our money-back guarantee.

Study Tip 5 - Understand what you're getting into.

Some people will find that they have a knack for the legal and insurance concepts this course covers. Others will find that the course requires diligent effort on their part in order to pass.

Lets take a look at an example from one of the thousands of laws and regulations that govern the insurance industry. This quote is in regard to a long-term care insurance policy (Don't worry, our course won't include anything this confusing!) -

Termination of a policy shall be without prejudice to any benefits payable for institutionalization if the institutionalization began while the policy was in force and continues without interruption after termination. Such extension of benefits beyond the period during which the policy was in force may be limited to the duration of the benefit period, if any, or to payment of the maximum benefits; and may be subject to any policy waiting period and all other applicable provisions of the policy.

Our job is to take the important concepts from complex laws and summarize and rephrase them to be easier for our students to understand. For example, you might find the following -

A policy must continue to pay benefits after termination if institutionalization began while the policy was in force and has continued since without interruption. This mandatory extension of benefits may be limited by policy provisions such as predetermined benefit periods or maximum total benefits.

Hopefully the second example is a bit more clear. Don't be intimidated! Your job is to learn at your pace. You can pass your insurance exam if you are smart about your study habits and give yourself a fair chance.