How we weight the INBDE cheat sheets

The INBDE does not have subjects. It crosses ten Foundation Knowledge areas with fifty-six Clinical Content areas, and a single question can sit at the intersection of several. That is why a study list organised by the old discipline names — pharmacology, microbiology, operative — cannot tell you how much of the exam any of its entries is worth. The exam stopped being organised that way.

What JCNDE does publish is a table. Three clinical component sections down the side, ten Foundation Knowledge areas across the top, thirty cells, each one a percentage of the exam. It is in Appendix C of the Technical Report, at one decimal place, and it is the only per-topic quantity JCNDE releases. Everything on a Dentovio sheet that claims to be a published weight comes from that table and nowhere else.

Everything else on this page is arithmetic we do on those published figures. It is useful, it is reproducible, and it is ours — not JCNDE's. We keep the two apart on every surface, because the moment an estimate is printed without its label it becomes a number a candidate believes came from the testing agency.

A form carries 500 items, so a percentage of the exam converts to items by multiplying by 5. That is the whole conversion. Oral Health Management at 42.0% is 210 of the 500 items; Diagnosis & Treatment Planning at 36.2% is 181; Practice & Profession at 21.8% is 109. A single cell works the same way: the 6.8% where Oral Health Management meets FK1 is about 34 items.

Sixty per cent of the items stand alone and forty per cent arrive inside a case — 300 standalone and 200 case-delivered. Day 1 is three sections of 100 standalone items and one section of 60 case items, 360 items across 8 hours 15 minutes. Day 2 is two sections of 70 case items, 140 items across 4 hours 15 minutes, and it has to happen within seven days of Day 1 at the same test centre.

How many items ride on one case is a point where JCNDE's own current documents disagree, so we are not going to pretend otherwise. The INBDE Technical Report (2025 edition) says on page 18 that "each case contains 2 to 5 items". The Test Item Development Guide defines an itemset or case as "a group of 3 to 6 items". Both are current, both are JCNDE, and nothing we could find reconciles them. Plan for a case to be worth roughly two to six items and do not build any calculation that depends on the exact figure — including ours: nothing in the weighting below uses it.

Scoring is compensatory: one overall score on a 49 to 99 scale in one-point increments, with 75 as the passing standard. There is no per-day or per-section minimum to clear. And 75 is a scaled score, not a percentage — it does not mean 75% of items correct, and treating it that way is one of the most common planning errors we see.

A sheet that owns two of the fifteen Diagnosis & Treatment Planning areas is estimated at 2 ÷ 15 × 36.2 = 4.83% of the exam, about 24 items. A sheet that owns one of the twenty-three Oral Health Management areas is estimated at 1.83%, about 9 items. Sheets that span two sections add the two parts.

The consequence is the argument for the whole set: on an equal allocation, one Diagnosis & Treatment Planning area is worth about twice one Practice & Profession area — 2.413% against 1.211%. Two sheets that look the same size on a contents page are not the same size on the exam.

The 2025 first-attempt failure rate of 34.9% in the non-accredited cohort is the highest in the published series since 2020. Be exact about that: 2020 was higher, at 38.8%, on 147 candidates — a group small enough that the two figures are not really comparable.

The honest caveat on any year-over-year reading is that a new performance standard was introduced in 2024, based on updated standard-setting activities. Rates before and after that change are not measuring against the same bar, so a 2023 figure is not a fair benchmark for a 2025 one.

These are cohort statistics. They describe groups, not you, and nothing on this page predicts an individual result. What they do justify is planning against the blueprint rather than against a topic list — and, if you are retaking, planning around the minimum 60-day wait between unsuccessful attempts.

You will see prep material assert that candidates struggle most with one area or another. There is no published source for such a claim. JCNDE releases pass and failure rates by cohort and by attempt — nothing by content area — so any ranking of areas by candidate difficulty is either an inference from a private dataset or someone's impression written in the voice of data.

So we do not make one. Not in a sheet, not in a heading, not in a study order. Our sheets are ordered by the share of the exam their areas carry, which is a published quantity, with two deliberate exceptions we state openly on the index: the cross-cutting numbers sheet ships first because every other sheet cites it, and two low-share sheets ship early because being wrong in those areas has consequences beyond a score.

Where two authorities genuinely disagree about a value, the sheet prints both and marks the row as one not to key an answer on. Where no number exists, the sheet prints the absence. Neither of those is a gap in the product — they are the product.

INBDE® is a registered trademark of the American Dental Association, administered by the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations (JCNDE). Dentovio is an independent prep provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by JCNDE or the ADA.

Dentovio provides independent educational preparation using original exam-style material. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by JCNDE, PSI, or any dental board, and it does not reproduce recalled exam questions.

This page explains exam structure and a weighting method. It contains no clinical guidance, and cohort statistics describe groups rather than individuals — nothing here predicts any candidate's result. Exam specifications change on JCNDE's schedule; confirm current requirements in JCNDE's own materials before planning around them.