NBDE vs INBDE: What Changed, and How to Get Old NBDE Scores

The National Board Dental Examination (NBDE) is no longer offered. JCNDE — the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations, the ADA agency that runs the National Board exams — discontinued NBDE Part I on July 31, 2020 and made NBDE Part II unavailable after July 31, 2022. Its replacement, the Integrated National Board Dental Examination (INBDE), launched on August 1, 2020 and has been the single National Board written examination for U.S. dental licensure ever since. It is accepted in all U.S. licensing jurisdictions.

That one change answers most of the questions that bring people to this page:

• If you are preparing for boards now, your exam is the INBDE. There is no Part 1 or Part 2 to take, and no choice between the old and new exams. Any study advice organized around "Part 1" and "Part 2" predates the exam you will sit — our how-to-pass guide covers the exam that actually exists.
• If you already passed the NBDE, you are done with National Boards. JCNDE's own transition guidance is explicit that candidates who successfully completed NBDE Parts I and II are no longer eligible to take any National Board Dental Examination — there is nothing to retake, and completed National Boards were presented to state boards as one of the two acceptable sequences.
• If you need proof of an old NBDE pass — for licensure in a new state, credentialing, or an employer — the record still exists and is still reportable. The request runs through your DENTPIN account with the ADA's Department of Testing Services (DTS); the verified process is in the score-report section below.

The NBDE was two separate examinations taken years apart: Part I, traditionally sat after the basic-science years of dental school, and Part II, sat near graduation, with 900 questions across the two parts. The INBDE folded both into one integrated 500-item examination taken over two days. JCNDE's stated reason for the redesign: 2013 accreditation standards required dental curricula to integrate basic, behavioral, and clinical sciences, and the separate-parts exam no longer matched how dentistry is taught — the INBDE tests those sciences inside the same questions instead of in separate exams.

Two details in that table deserve emphasis, because stale pages get both wrong:

The famous numeric NBDE score belongs to a specific era. On today's official results reports, National Board results are reported as pass or fail — but JCNDE still reports numerical scores for candidates who tested before 2012. So a dentist licensed in 2008 genuinely has a numeric Part I score on file, while one who tested in 2015 has a pass — and an INBDE candidate who passes sees no number at all. If a program or employer asks for "your board score," that request only has a numeric answer for the pre-2012 cohort.

"Part 1/Part 2 advice" is not just dated — it describes a different exam. Study sequences built around clearing basic sciences first and clinical topics later mirror a structure the INBDE deliberately abolished. The INBDE mixes Foundation Knowledge and Clinical Content in the same questions, weights its three clinical sections by a published specification, and dedicates its entire second day to patient-case questions. The how-to-pass guide and the full blueprint reference cover the current design; the Day 2 guide covers the case day the NBDE never had.

Your completed National Boards remain completed. When JCNDE announced the transition, its guidance to state dental boards said to "prepare to accept candidates who have successfully completed the National Boards," under either sequence: the INBDE, or NBDE Parts I and II. Its companion guidance for test takers is equally clear in the other direction — after successfully completing NBDE Part I and Part II (or the INBDE), a candidate is no longer eligible to take any National Board Dental Examination. There is no INBDE requirement for dentists who finished the two-part sequence, and no mechanism to convert an NBDE pass into an INBDE result.

But National Board completion and licensure eligibility are different things, and only the first one is JCNDE's. JCNDE's role is to report examination results; each licensing jurisdiction determines its own requirements — JCNDE's own transition documents say exactly that. In practice that means:

• JCNDE publishes no expiration date on NBDE results: your attempts stay on file and continue to appear on official results reports (the next section covers how to have one sent).
• Whether an NBDE pass from a given year satisfies a particular board's current written-exam requirement — and what else that board layers on top, such as recency-of-practice rules, jurisprudence exams, or clinical exam requirements — is that board's decision, published in that board's rules. We do not make a blanket claim here because no official source supports one.
• Before relying on an old pass for a new license — endorsement, licensure by credentials, or a first license in a new state — check the specific board's current requirements. Our state-by-state licensure directory links each jurisdiction's exam requirements and board sources, and the foreign-trained dentist licensure pages cover the non-CODA pathways where boards differ most.

This is the part of the topic where stale advice does real damage, so here is the process exactly as the ADA's current published materials describe it — verified against the 2026 INBDE Candidate Guide (updated 08/04/2026) and the live JCNDE site on 2026-08-09.

1. Your NBDE history is in the reportable record. The Candidate Guide states that in providing results, "all previous attempts on the National Board Dental Examinations (i.e., NBDE Part I, NBDE Part II, and the INBDE) are reported," and that for candidates who tested before 2012, "numerical scores for prior attempts are still reported." An official results report is therefore also the vehicle for a legacy NBDE record.

2. Requests go through your DENTPIN account. Per the Candidate Guide: "Results report requests can be made by signing into your DENTPIN account (ADA.org/DENTPIN) and going to the 'Requests' tab. DTS will provide a history of results to dental and dental hygiene boards and any additional recipients indicated." DENTPIN is the ADA's testing identifier; if you tested in the NBDE era and no longer know yours, the ADA's DENTPIN page is the retrieval point — retrieve the existing DENTPIN rather than registering a new one, so the request matches your testing record. The sign-in used across JCNDE's pages is the DTS portal at adadts.my.site.com.

3. The published fee schedule is the INBDE program's. The 2026 fee table lists $55 per additional results report — defined as a report to "a recipient NOT selected at the time of application." That figure sits in the INBDE fee schedule; the ADA does not publish a separate schedule for score-report requests tied only to legacy NBDE attempts. Treat $55 as the published reference point, not a guaranteed legacy price, and confirm the amount for your situation with the ADA's testing services when you submit the request: nbexams@ada.org or 800.232.1694, both listed on JCNDE's site.

4. Boards can also work through the DTS Hub. For credentialing staff verifying on the receiving end: JCNDE's site describes the DTS Hub as the platform where "schools and boards ... approve examination applications and view scores" — the same portal login. A board that participates there views reported results directly; candidates cannot self-serve someone else's record, and results go to third parties only with the candidate's permission via a results report request, per the Candidate Guide.

5. A National Board certificate is a separate, optional document. JCNDE's homepage states: "If you have completed a National Board Dental Examination and would like to purchase an official National Board certificate, use your DENTPIN and password to log in." That wording covers National Board completers generally — not only INBDE candidates. The certificate's price is shown after login; even the INBDE fee table prints "log in using DENTPIN" instead of a dollar figure, so we will not invent one. A certificate is a wall document, not a results report — boards asking for score verification want the report.

What the ADA does not publish, as of our verification date: a dedicated legacy-NBDE score-request page (the old score-reports URL now lands on the general DENTPIN page), a fee schedule specific to legacy-only requests, and processing times for score-report delivery. Where a detail is not published, the honest instruction is the one above: sign in, submit the request, and confirm specifics with nbexams@ada.org — not a number quoted from someone's forum memory.

Everything future-facing about National Boards now runs through the INBDE, and Dentovio's free INBDE surfaces cover the run-up in order:

• Learn the exam that exists. The how-to-pass guide is the full logistics walkthrough — format, eligibility, fees, Prometric scheduling, scoring, and retake rules, cited to JCNDE documents. The blueprint reference holds all 10 Foundation Knowledge and 56 Clinical Content areas in JCNDE's exact wording, and the Day 2 guide explains the 140-question case day.
• Plan a runway, not a cram. The study-schedule generator turns your exam date, weekly hours, and candidate type into a week-by-week plan built on the published section weights.
• Get a baseline before you buy anything. The free readiness mock uses original standalone and Patient Box items — no signup, no recalled questions — and scores you by Foundation Knowledge area.
• Read the outcome data with the right labels. The pass-rate page carries JCNDE's published cohort outcomes for 2021–2025, including the June 2024 standard change.

One caution that belongs in this guide specifically: because the NBDE is retired, question banks and notes recycled from NBDE-era prep are two exams out of date. Materials worth your runway state which exam they target and when they were last verified. Dentovio's INBDE items are original and written against the current blueprint — that policy, and what it refuses to let us claim, is documented on how this content is verified.