It goes without saying that every mark on an OREA examination is important. Seventy-three or seventy-four marks on the exam is so close, and yet so far away. It’s one thing to miss marks, because you forgot or didn’t know; but quite another if you hastily answered without reading answer options c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y. As an example, one PassIt MCQ that causes a lot of difficulty involves the RCI process. This innocent-looking question, focused on RECO’s RCI process, has a high failure rate. Many pick what appears to be an obvious choice, which states that RCI stands for Registrant Complaints and Investigations. While this sounds really official, it’s wrong. RCI stands for Registrar Complaints and Inquiries.
It’s all about reading and rushing, instead of concentrating. Reading comprehension is everything when it comes to exams. We’ll call it thinking reading. For many, thinking reading is not aggressively practised in real life. We all have the ability, but often don’t develop this particular skill. Adults avoid brain overload by skimming newspapers, flipping TV channels, and blocking out all but the essentials. Whether it’s a cell phone or hi-tech features on a car, we cut to the chase. Let’s use it and learn about it later. There’s even a marketing phrase for hard-to-learn, feature-rich technology products. It’s called feature cram. Feature cram lengthens the learning curve. (Translation: It’s harder to quickly understand something.). Today’s humans cope by sidestepping the instruction book and getting on with their lives. As a matter of pure self defence, we settle for the absolute essentials: Just give me the facts. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for all the details in this exploding information society. Think about it. We didn’t even have enough time to carefully read and understand the VCR instruction manual before the machine was obsolete.
But studying for exams is different. As the old saying goes: The devil lies in the details. Now let’s go back to Registrant Complaints and Investigations. While the acronym RCI involves complaints about registrants, the program is overseen by the Registrar, not the registrants; hence the R in RCI. The second word Complaints is correct for C. Lastly, the word Investigations is not correct, as investigations lie beyond the RCI process. RECO even puts investigations and inspections under a separate topic in the course just to make that point very clear. The correct word is Inquiries. A fundamental part of the RCI process is inquiring about written complaints to determine whether or not action is warranted.
What you learn today will help you for years to come. Don’t treat it like the VCR. Start finessing your thinking reading skills today.
Posted in Exam Prep, REPC Exam Topics
Tags: Course 1, OREA Exam, RCI, Real Estate as a Professional Career, RECO, REPC
