HINTS – GETTING STARTED – MATH COURSE

Lessons & Required Exams

The course is not short and it requires time and effort, however the rewards are great. The best hint we can provide is to plan a certain amount of time per week to consistently devote to the course. e.g. complete one lesson and related exams per week and make sure to take practice exams regularly to supplement the course curriculum. As for the details of getting started…

1. First Exam (optional)
2. Complete All 10 Lessons (1 and 2 must come first)
   • Begin reading and watching learning material.
   • Student confirms completion of learning material.
   • Next take diagnostic and practice exams.
   • Required scores determine completion of exams.
3. Final Exam

The easiest way to approach the course is to complete every element in the Required Exams list from top to bottom in order. That is all you need to do, but for those who want to approach it a little differently please read the following details. We suggest the student first take the Optional First Exam. This is a full length 60 minute exam and no passing score is required at this stage.

The course is divided into 10 Lessons which are the instruction units housing all the learning material and approximately 90 lesson related Required Exams(approx. 60 Diagnostic and 30 Practice Drills) which confirm your skills based on the material in the lessons. Virtually all skills covered on the BCTS math exam and then some are included. Both lesson reading and exams have to be completed in full in order to complete the course. The lessons or learning material is accessible from the Required Exams list or any of the colored, numbered lesson boxes on the left. Each lesson offers 3 sources of instruction material and we advise you review all three for each lesson. You must confirm that you have reviewed the learning material by marking the lecture series on each lesson page completed. Only then will you be able to access the diagnostic and other exams for the lesson to test your skills. The diagnostic exams, labeled in a format like “Lesson 1: Ratios”, must be completed first. You must progress to level 5 on all diagnostic exams to progress onto the related practice drill questions organized by question category (labeled in the format L 1 Drills: Fractions). You will be required to score 9.0 points or higher in order to pass or complete the lesson drills. A lesson will be considered passed only after completing all phases of the lesson. In this way, you will learn the material, then practice your 60+ math skills, then learn to implement those skills in the nearly 30 question categories for the BCTS exam.

Lessons 1 and 2 must be started and completed in order. These include many of the fundamentals required for the course. After that, you may progress to any lesson in any order you choose. However, all lessons must be passed in order to complete the course. At the end a final exam will be required to 100% complete the course. Good luck!

It is important and helpful to ask questions along the way. Our goal is to help you raise your score to gain admission to a Bergen County Technical school. The keys to success are first putting in the time and effort, secondly asking questions along the way (don’t hesitate because every student at every level will have questions and the only mistake is not asking them), and lastly measuring your progress against your goals and deciding when or if extra help is needed. For example, if you have covered the lesson and, I expect, improved, but are still lagging below desired scores then other options like tutoring should be considered before it is too late. Fortunately, we can help in that area as well. Also, remember you can take any other full-length practice exams or problem sets under the Exams menu at any time. These are separate questions and exam content from the course and great benchmarks to measure your progress through the course material. The full-length exams are just not required for the course except for the two at the beginning and end.