Pibbers, I just wanted to post a response to a few questions that I have recently received concerning the “new” Oregon insurance exam administered by Prometric. Take a look below at some of the comments that I have received:
- I agree! When I took my Health exam I was stunned to see questions that were not covered in the study material. It had questions on Social Security and tax that I had not seen before. I felt the test was not fair and slighted so I would fail it. Is this a way for them to get more money with increased re-testing?
- It only took 6 months of complaints before you decided to do this. Kudos on the timely response.
- Well, I have been studying the Life portion of the ProSchools course and am just getting ready to start in on the Health. This is good information, and a bit concerning? Have you learned anything recently? Or maybe an update on the retirement taxation laws? I will read on. And, am also excited about getting into the insurance business.
- All suggestions are appreciated. I found the hardest thing to understand is all the different types of whole life products?
I have responded to these questions within the posts they were attached to, but I have learned quite a bit about the exam through my testing experience a few days ago. Read on for my thoughts and suggestions!
OK…in looking at the first question, our health insurance material covers Social Security in-depth. Granted, this information is somewhat deep in nature, and could easily result in a student not remembering a thing or two, but it’s all covered. Secondly, is the test fair? Is it slighted and tilted in the sense that they WANT a student to fail? I don’t think so. My experience with the test gave me the impression that it is fair…the problem normally stems from the verbiage seen on the test. The questions are commonly tough to understand, I hear a lot of “I didn’t even know what they were asking!” This is something that I have to agree with in principle and in reality. I easily ran into a dozen or so questions where I had to really read them well to understand the gist of the question, and then read the answers just as carefully to properly answer the darn things!
On to question #2- my assumption is that you meant it took 6 months to get them to let us test, and you’re glad it finally actually happened! In that vein, I agree! It was a royal pain in the backside to accomplish this, and I have to give a “thank you” to Mr. Jim Thompson of the Oregon Insurance Division who greased the wheels for this. If it wasn’t for Jim, I don’t think it would have occurred at all!
About question #3, interesting comment. I have learned a great deal about the “mentality” (so to speak) of the test, and will be posting lots of additional commentary on what I ran into within the coming days and weeks. A couple of things that I would suggest bear commenting on now are:
- Make sure that you read the questions and the answers very carefully. The test has a tendency to give you “double-negative” answers, and those are difficult to understand. As an example, check this out: “An insured that owns a major medical expense policy would normally have coverage for which of the following situations?” Answers given included “(A) Not for a tropical disease.” What does this mean? Tropical diseases are covered, and the answer says NOT for them. What are they trying to say? Can’t even understand the answers, so how do you answer the question? I also ran into probably three or so questions that could NOT be answered given the question asked. One questions had NO correct answers, and two others had more than one correct answer given the question! Again…what is that?
I plan on getting these questions corrected, assuming I can. I have ongoing discussions with Oregon’s Insurance Division, and they have responded to my concerns quickly and honestly. In addition, I am in the process of putting new question banks together that reflect the verbiage shown on the Prometric exam, which are phrased differently than the old Pearson-Vue examinations. This is a huge undertaking, and affects many of our internal systems, so it’s going to take a while to get done. Finally, please let me know if there’s anything else that I can help make easier, and I would be more than happy to do so. Take care PIBbers!
-Gary