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National Exam (NPTE®)

All about the NPTE

Taking the National Physical Therapy Examination (NPTE) is an important step toward receiving your physical therapist (PT) or physical therapist assistant (PTA) license. Here you'll find everything you need to know about the NPTE from start to finish:

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Purpose of the NPTE

The PT and PTA exams are designed to assess your basic entry-level competence after graduation from an accredited program or from an equivalent non-accredited program.

The FSPBT develops, maintains, and administers the NPTE for two reasons:

  1. 1

    To help ensure that only those individuals who have the requisite knowledge of physical therapy are licensed in the physical therapy field.

  2. 2

    To help regulatory authorities evaluate candidates and provide standards that are comparable from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

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Additional Requirements

The NPTE is only one part of the evaluation process used by licensing authorities to assess your competence. Contact your jurisdiction to find out what additional requirements there are, such as taking a jurisprudence exam or a jurisprudence assessment module.