Pre-Competency Exam
An internship pre-competency exam will be administered during Orientation Week to the Dietetic Internship Program. This competency exam will cover all material that the intern learned from their respective DPD program. This exam will be very similar to what you will expect to see when you take the RD exam for Dietetic Registration when you graduate from the internship program. The exam will be an eatrightPREP simulated practice exam and will be proctored on campus.
An acceptable passing score for the pre-competency exam is 70% or higher. Obtaining a score lower than 70% will NOT prevent an intern from starting supervised practice rotations. The Internship Director may require the intern utilize additional eatrightPREP materials to help strengthen the intern's knowledge if they did not pass the pre-competency exam with a 70% or higher.
Final Competency Exam
On class day #3 prior to starting the elective rotation, all interns will take a final competency exam, a simulated practice exam in eatrightPREP. To pass the internship program, an acceptable score for the final competency exam is 70% or higher. Interns who do not score a 70% or higher on the final competency exam will have an opportunity to re-take a different final competency exam one week later.
Suggestions to prepare for the final competency exam:
-
Completion of eatrightPREP throughout the Internship Program, as required
-
Reviewing textbooks, notes, other study material from the intern's DPD program
-
Purchasing commercial RD exam study material including but not limited to:
Interns may choose to purchase commercial review material when they graduate from the internship to prepare for the RD exam. Utilizing eatrightPREP throughout rotations should be sufficient for exam preparation, but interns can purchase additional material if desired.
If an intern does not pass the re-take of the final competency exam, the Dietetic Internship Director will develop a personalized remediation plan with the intern to be accomplished during the elective rotation. The purpose of the remediation plan is to help strengthen his/her knowledge to pass the RD exam. In the event an intern must complete a remediation plan, any cost associated with this including the required purchase of additional study material will be at the intern's expense. Once this remediation plan has been completed at a satisfactory level, and all supervised practice hours in the elective rotation and in the internship overall have been completed, a verification statement will be issued to the intern.
The purpose for taking the pre-competency exam and final competency exam is to prepare the intern for RD exam.
