About Lindley Test Prep, its sources and its checks

The site starts with one field, Dietetics & Nutrition, and two exams in it: the registration exam behind the RD/RDN title, run by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), and the CDCES exam, run by the Certification Board for Diabetes Care and Education (CBDCE).

Every exam gets the same set of pages, and each page answers one kind of question:

• the overview: who may sit the exam and how renewal works;
• a free practice test in which every answer option is explained;
• a study guide that follows the content outline in force, one section per domain;
• exam info: length, time, scoring, results and retakes;
• registration: booking, test sites and what it costs.

More exams join in batches, each with the same five pages. The order follows what candidates look for and what the site can cover well. No board or vendor has a say in it.

Some things a reference site cannot do, and this one does not pretend to.

• It cannot rule on your eligibility. Only the board decides whether a degree, a program or a set of practice hours qualifies; the pages quote its rules.
• It does not book or sell anything. Each board, and the vendor it uses, handles appointments and payments; the registration pages name both.
• It does not reproduce live exam content. Both exams are confidential, and the practice items follow the published outline instead of anyone's recollection of a sitting.
• It does not predict your result. Practice results here have no conversion to either exam's scaled score, and nothing on the site promises a pass.
• It carries no advertising, no sign-up, no paid tier and no app.

Exam facts come straight from what the certifying body itself publishes: its candidate handbook, its test specifications or content outline, its published exam statistics, and its eligibility, fee and renewal pages. For the RD exam those are CDR documents. For the diabetes exam they are CBDCE documents, plus the test vendor's pages where the board sends candidates to them. Comparison rows for other credentials come from the body that awards each one, such as the BCNS pages for the CNS.

Prep companies, course sellers, forums and university blogs are not used as sources, even when what they say turns out to be right. Each fact table links every row to its document, in a source column or a numbered note; a row that rests on two documents names both. If one body's documents contradict each other, the most recent dated one wins.

A checked date is the day the document behind a row was last read. At launch every row on the site was read on November 13, 2026.

An as-of date goes with figures that move on their own: fees, pass rates and counts of credential holders. A fee printed here is the list price on that date, and the booking screen is what you actually pay.

An effective date marks a rule that has been adopted but has not started yet. The clearest case is the RD exam, whose 2027–2031 specifications apply from January 1, 2027. Until such a date the pages describe the rule as coming and say which rule covers someone who tests before it.

Where a handbook is silent, the page says so. The 2026 CDCES handbook states no waiting period before a retake, and the site reports that gap instead of filling it with a number from somewhere else.

A question is published only after these passes:

1. It is solved cold, using only the stem and options, with key and explanation hidden. Disagreement between that cold answer and the key means rework or removal.
2. Each wrong option is then tested on its own: could it be defended from the content outline or a current guideline? Questions that ask for the first or best action get the hardest look. Any item left with two defensible answers is repaired or cut.
3. Every option gets an explanation of its own, saying why the key is right and where each distractor fails.
4. A second, independent review then checks the finished item against current guidelines and the outline, recalculates any arithmetic and looks for wording that gives the answer away.
5. The question is compared with sets already published, so that a lightly reworded copy cannot get through. Close matches are replaced with new material.

RD questions carry two domain tags, one for the 2022–2026 specifications and one for the 2027–2031 specifications, and only content that holds under both is used. CDCES questions follow the board's 2024 outline.

Each exam's facts live in one record, and every page that quotes a figure draws it from there. A correction is therefore made once and reaches every page that uses the figure, with a new checked date beside it.

When a document is read again and a figure has changed, the new figure replaces the old one in the record instead of sitting next to it. A rule announced for a later date is added with that date and does not replace the current rule early. There is no inbox for reporting errors yet; the contact page explains what to do instead.

No certifying body, association, test vendor or school pays for, reviews or approves anything published here, and the site takes no affiliate commissions. Credential names such as RD, RDN and CDCES are their owners' trademarks, named on these pages solely so you know which exam is meant.