Retaking the VTNE: the rules and a calm plan

The retake rules

From the AAVSB candidate handbook:

• You fill out a new application and pay the exam fee again.
• You can retake the exam at least 31 days after your last attempt, and no more than three times in a calendar year. That can mean testing again within the same window if you apply before its cutoff.
• The AAVSB allows five attempts, counted from 1 January 2006. A sixth needs a letter from your state or provincial board and your own written statement of how you’ve prepared, reviewed by the AAVSB’s Board of Directors (retake guidelines).
• Some places need their board’s approval after three attempts: all Canadian provinces, Indiana, Tennessee and Missouri. Missouri won’t accept a score from a fifth attempt or later.
• Your own state or province may have its own retake rules and fees. The AAVSB’s retake page asks you to check them.

Scores are scaled from 200 to 800, and 425 passes. The AAVSB doesn’t report a number or percentage correct. Your score report appears in your MyAAVSB portal within three business days, and the AAVSB score page says you can see it for a year.

A calm plan for the next attempt

1. Rest, then read your score report. Give yourself a few days. Then read the report in your portal and write down what felt hard while it’s fresh: topics, the kind of question, the timing. Write topics, never the questions themselves: every candidate agrees not to record or share exam content.
2. Find your weak domains. Do a mixed set of practice questions across all ten domains and sort what you missed by domain. Set that against how much each domain counts on the exam blueprint. A weak domain that carries a lot of questions is where your hours go first.
3. Drill those domains on purpose. One domain at a time. Answer before you look, read every explanation (the ones you got right too), and keep a list of misses to try again on a later day. The how-to-study page explains why this works.
4. Then the math. Work each type on paper with fresh numbers until you get the method right without the worked solution. The exam gives you an on-screen calculator, so practise with one.
5. Pick your date. At least 31 days out, before the window’s application cutoff, with the last couple of weeks back on mixed sets across every domain.

How VTNE Rounds helps

When you get it wrong, it tells you why, and where in the book to look.

• 1,000 practice questions across the ten AAVSB domains, weighted like the exam’s content outline.
• Every answer shows the textbook it came from and where to find it.
• The explanations cover why the right answer is right and why the others aren’t.
• Math problems with new numbers every time, so you learn the method, not the answer.
• Built by Ari Kleine, a California RVT with five years in emergency and critical care.

We can’t promise you a pass, and nobody honestly can. We can show you exactly where every answer comes from.