Just took my ABO. HereÂ’s what to expect

[Prentice Pro 9000]

For anybody curious about taking the ABO, I’m going to give you details about it.


First off, about me: I’ve been in the industry for ten years in a state that does not require licensing or certification. I would consider myself a solid optician. With some studying I believe I could pass an advanced test.


About the test: it’s two parts. Written (well, typed into a computer, but you get what I’m saying), and practical (also now on a computer). Written is 125 questions and practical is 30. Written is 2 hour time limit and practical has 45 minutes I think.


Written test: what’s on it?

• Tons of prism stuff. Like literally tons.
• Some regulatory questions.
• A few tricky tolerance questions.
• Maybe one compensated Rx (spherical only)
• One power cross question
• A few anatomy questions
• Like two or three astigmatism type questions (compound, simple, mixed)
• A bunch of easy questions that just seem like padding.
• Some lens questions (definition, abbe value, best lens for particular use case)
• Maybe two focal length/power questions
• Some adjustment questions which are easy

Stuff that I was surprised was NOT on the test (at least for me)

• Power in meridian formula questions
• Displacement/prism questions
• Don’t really recal any occular health or condition problems( I sucked at anatomy up until taking this test and stuff like this worried me)
• Age old questions I was expecting like ptosis crutch or speed of light.
• Nothing about virtual or real images.

Overall, I got about a 90% and did not encounter anything that I had never heard of before.


Practical test: what’s on it?

• Questions with a virtual lensometer where you need to check tolerances.
• Questions with a virtual Pupilometer
• Questions where you pick the correct tool from a picture of about 15
• Videos where a person describes a problem and you have to answer how to resolve it.
• Questions where you need to measure PD and figure out if they pass or not

I HATED this part. Which is funny because I thought it would be the easier part. The virtual lensometer is absolute garbage. Things that I do everyday and know intuitively were just way too hard to replicate with this thing. In the handbook to prep for this they say “there’s nothing tricky about this test”. Well, this felt pretty tricky. Having an unclear image with a janky fake lensometer while trying to answer a question that depends on something being at or beyond a 8th diopter is kind of unfair and crummy. Also, every time I had to use a virtual ruler, the mm markings were NOT clear. In fact, all of the images were quite blurry.


I passed this section as well, but just barely. I wholly blame the format. If there’s an ABO employee out there, please fix this.


Lastly, I got my results in about five minutes. One thing that I despise is that you are not given the specific answers that you got incorrect. For the amount of money that you pay, you should get this. Again, anybody from ABO out there? Please fix this.


I guess I can call myself an optician now.