Before Writing the OACIQ Residential Exam, What Should I Know?
You must understand that the OACIQ residential exam tests you on seven “competencies“. In order to pass the exam, you must pass ALL seven competencies. If you fail even one competency, your final result will be a fail. Note that the competencies do not necessarily match the courses you’ve done in your school. For example, school’s generally do not have a course called “managing your professional activities”, but there is a competency with that name, and its material could have been taught across several of your courses.
The exam is spread across 2 days (3.5 hours each day) and includes multiple choice, open ended questions and contract scenarios. What’s an open-ended question? It could be a short answer question, a calculation, or pretty much any type of question that does not have a predefined set of answer options. The exam is now done in person on a computer (not your personal computer).
In terms of grading, the OACIQ does not grade your exam in a standard x/100 way. Instead, they look at the errors you made and assess the severity of them (i.e. critical vs. minor). If your error could have severely effected a real estate transaction, it may result in the failure of that competency. The exact number of errors allowed before resulting in a fail is not known by the public.
If I Fail the Exam, What Do I Do?
Well, prepare as best you can to avoid failing. However, it is a challenging exam, and failing is unfortunately not uncommon. If you fail you will have to rewrite the exam and pass all 7 competencies on the retake, even if you only failed one competency the first time around. There is also a maximum number of times within a certain period that you can retake the exam.
Failing the exam not only delays your career, but it is costly as well as the fee to write the exam is quite significant. Don’t waste precious time and money, prepare yourself! It will help you succeed at the exam, but as a broker as well!
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What can I do to prepare for the exam?
In theory, the courses you have taken over your real estate program should have prepared you for the exam. However, in reality, students often forget the material over time, or are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material. A certain amount of private tutoring (8 – 10 hours) helps you narrow down the material to the most important concepts, and clarifies the concepts so that you truly understand them rather than just memorizing them. I also advise students to utilize the resources provide by the OACIQ on the Synbad platform.
