Hello,

I recently signed up for the MO pre-license course online. I understand that there is a math section. Are you allowed to use financial calculators or are you supposed to write everything out by hand during the exam?

Does anyone have any advice as far as what to focus my studying on?

Thanks

I'm assuming its the same in every state - they alow you to use plain calculators but not scientific or any calc that will store any info or anything. Depending on how high tech your calc is, I'd probably leave it at home and bring a simple one. I actually prefer to do some of it by hand just to make sure I got the info right though... but I've always been a math geek ;-)

I just used a cheap, old calculator when I took my test. The math section was pretty easy, common sense stuff (how many 2 acre lots in 550,000 square foot land area, etc).
BTW Rae, what part of the state do you work in? I'm serve the Northern Fairfield County/Southern Litchfield.

It's the same here in CA. They are very specific about the kind of calculator you can and cannot use. Basically, you get to bring the kind with very simple functionality.

But the math questions I had were so ridiculously simple I didn’t even use it. In fact, I didn’t even use my scratch paper. You could do them in your head.

Really? I thought there were be questions on yield and things like that. I know how to use a financial calculator to calculate Pesent Value, Yield, Future Value, etc. Are these the types of questions, or is it more on simpler things such as miles, acres, room sizes (sqft) ?

It was just simple things for me, such as area, square feet and so on. One of the more difficult things could be figuring out how much interest was being paid a year on a mortgage payment and the amount of taxes for a property, depending on the mill rate upon the assessed rate.

Jonathan - I'm in Meriden. I haven't gotten my license yet - waiting on my class to send me trhe certified "i passed" letter....so then I can go take the state exam. I'll mainly be working in the area from New Haven up to Meriden... I ahven't 100% picked a broker yet, but so far I'm leaning towards Century 21 Acess America....

I can only answer for CA and the particular test I took. But I only had two math questions on my test and they were embarrassingly easy. I was actually hoping for more, because math is one of my strong-suits.

All the practice tests I took had much more complex questions, but none that required anything more than just a basic calculator.

Again, your state may be completely different.

It has been 7 years since I took my MO test but there was a bunch of math on it then--my wife was licensed 3 years ago and she said that there was quite a bit on it then--nothing really too hard though and all you should need is a regular calculator.
My best advice for studying---Don't do the online course and get the classroom training---the instructors know which areas to key on and their job is teach you what it takes to pass the test and not what it takes to actually be a Realtor.
JMHO

I definately agree with summers. Take the course where you can have instructors. PM me if you want a name of a good school. I am on the Kansas side but we could get our MO license at the same time. Same for MO people. If you are close to the Kansas/Mo border it would be handy to have both. The school I went to has about a 90 percent pass rate I believe. I am not trying to advertise for them but they did good. I was working my lawn landscape business at the time and wasnt able to study much but did take the extra review class and I passed the first try. One thing they do stress. You are there to learn how to pass the test and you do learn a lot. However you will learn more from working with your broker or whoever you can find to help. Its not real estate 101. The tests change quite often for kansas and missouri. The instructors from the school are known to meet students at mcdonalds or somewhere to ask them what is covered on the test to stay updated. Very much of the one I took was math. Several questions I remember had to do with prorating taxes. Good luck. PM me or email if you want to know about the school.