ARRT CT exam — passed with an 84%, here's the 8-week breakdown that worked
Finally passed my ARRT CT certification exam last week and wanted to share what actually worked. I studied for 8 weeks at about 1.5 hours a day on weekdays and 3 hours on Saturdays. My starting point on a diagnostic practice test was 61%, which was humbling considering I've been working in CT for 2 years. Ended up passing with an 84% on the real exam.
The biggest shift in my prep was realizing how heavily the exam tests protocols and patient positioning rather than just equipment operation. I kept assuming I knew positioning from daily work but the exam asks about it in really specific ways — rotation degrees, centering points, breathing instructions for specific scans. I made a protocol cheat sheet for every major body region and drilled it until I could recite it cold.
Weeks 1-3 I focused on anatomy and image quality, weeks 4-6 on protocols and procedures, and the last 2 weeks were entirely practice questions. The ARRT content specifications document is basically your study guide — if it's listed there, study it. I used Lange Q&A and the Saia review book and both were solid for different reasons.
Two years of working in CT really does help but it's almost dangerous because you can get overconfident. The exam catches things you do automatically on the scanner that you've never had to articulate. Especially artifact recognition — being able to name the artifact type and cause from an image is a big part of the test.
I studied for 10 weeks because I was working night shifts and couldn't always get my hours in. Passed with a 79%. The last 2 weeks of practice questions are where your score actually moves the most — don't rush that phase.
The Saia book is great for content but I found the practice questions in it a little easier than the real exam. Lange is harder and more representative of actual exam difficulty. If your Lange scores are consistently above 75% you're probably ready.
Passed 3 months ago with an 80%. The radiation physics and dose section was harder than I expected — not just conceptual stuff but actual calculation-type questions about mAs, kVp adjustments, and their effect on image noise and dose. Make sure you're solid on those relationships.
Congrats on passing! This thread's actually been really helpful timing-wise for me. I just took my second practice test yesterday and got a 72%, up from a 64% about three weeks ago. Not where I need to be yet but it's moving in the right direction. Physics and instrumentation is still what's dragging me down, same as you mentioned in your post.
I've got my exam scheduled for the second week of August, so roughly six weeks out. Honestly seeing that you went from 61% to passing gives me some hope, because I was starting to panic a little. Going to steal your Saturday long-session idea too. Did anyone else find the cross-sectional anatomy stuff easier on the real thing than on practice tests, or is that wishful thinking on my part?
Just wanted to pop in and share a quick update since I've been following this thread for a few weeks. Took a full practice test last night and scored a 74%, which honestly shocked me because I was sitting at 65% just three weeks ago. Patient positioning and protocol stuff finally clicked after I stopped trying to memorize everything and just started thinking through the logic of why each setting matters.
I'm planning to sit the real exam in about five weeks if I can keep this momentum going. A little nervous but a lot more confident than I was when I first started. Thanks for the breakdown in the original post -- it made me realize I wasn't spending nearly enough time on the CT-specific content areas and way too much time on general rad stuff I already know cold.
Honestly the biggest thing for me was just accepting that I wasn't going to study in long marathon sessions. I've got two kids and a full-time schedule, so I blocked out 6am to 7:30am before anyone woke up and that was it. Some days it was only 45 minutes. Didn't miss a single weekday though, and that consistency added up way faster than I expected.
For the actual content, I spent the first three weeks just doing questions and not worrying about scores. It's demoralizing at first but you start to see the patterns in what they're testing. Physics and protocols tripped me up the most, so I circled back to those in weeks five and six. By week seven I was consistently hitting the low 80s on practice sets and I knew I was ready. If you're fitting this in around a real job, just don't skip days. That's it. The time adds up.
Update for anyone following along: just hit 78% on my most recent practice run, which honestly felt like a huge relief after being stuck in the low 70s for two weeks. I've been hammering the physics and protocols sections specifically because that's where I kept bleeding points.
Planning to sit for the actual exam in about three weeks if I can keep this trajectory. It's not 84% yet but I feel like it's within reach. Thanks for the breakdown in the original post, it really helped me restructure how I was allocating my study time.