Ophthalmology oral board prep: the ABO, FRCOphth and EBO orals explained

The ABO Oral Examination is given online once a year, in the spring; ABO statistics show two administrations in 2024 and one a year since 2025. The next exam is May 14-15, 2027. Registration runs July 1 to December 9, 2026 (12:00 PM ET) and the fee is $2,250. You are assigned a Friday or Saturday session about eight weeks ahead and cannot reschedule it. Board Eligible candidates who withdraw before the registration deadline are refunded minus a $300 fee, and cancelling within 60 days of the exam gets no refund.

Certification has two steps, the Written Qualifying Examination (WQE) and then the oral, and both must be passed within seven years of residency graduation. The grace period for people no longer Board Eligible ended with the 2025 oral. The ABO says written and oral exams 'remain vital tools' for certification, and we found no announcement of a replacement format.

The ABO describes the oral as a face-to-face exam, currently held online, in which you explain how you would care for patients in clinical scenarios. It has 42 Patient Management Problems (PMPs), seven from each of six topic areas.

Test day lasts about four hours, including orientation, security checks and 10-minute breaks. There are three 50-minute appointments of 14 cases, each covering two paired subject areas, with two examiners presenting seven cases apiece. You meet at least six examiners, and 50 minutes for 14 cases works out to roughly three and a half minutes per case.

The exam runs in a custom browser-based platform (since May 2025) with Zoom for audio and video, and you need one monitor plus a mobile device as a second camera. Sessions may be recorded for scoring; candidates who refuse consent cannot be examined.

The six topic areas, each 16.7% of the exam, are:

In each appointment, two examiners independently score every case on Data Acquisition, Diagnosis and Management, where management covers the treatment plan, prognosis, follow-up and complications. Communication, professionalism and systems-based practice may also be assessed. Examiners may interrupt or move on to keep time, but may not teach, encourage, or say whether an answer is right.

All 42 cases count equally, scoring is compensatory, and no single case causes automatic failure. The standard is criterion-referenced, not curved: it was last set in 2021 by an Angoff panel, is kept by statistical equating, and the cut score is not published. Pass/fail results arrive about 6-8 weeks after the exam, with no further feedback.

In May 2026, 530 of 629 candidates passed (84.3%): 85.9% of first-time takers and 74.7% of repeaters. In May 2025 the overall rate was 82.7% (85.1% first-time). Passing brings a 10-year, time-limited certificate, and a Board Eligible candidate who fails can retake at the next administration.

The Part 2 FRCOphth Oral is the last exam before Fellowship and tests whether you perform at the standard of a general ophthalmology consultant. You must have passed Part 1 FRCOphth, the Refraction Certificate and the Part 2 Written within the last seven calendar years. It is aimed at OST level 3, but the June 2026 information pack and the 2026 exams calendar give different deadlines for OST trainees (middle of ST6 versus end of year seven), so check with the College.

The Structured Viva has five 10-minute stations, each with two consultant examiners: investigations and data interpretation; patient management 1 and 2; attitudes, ethics and responsibilities; and audit, research and evidence-based practice plus health promotion and disease prevention. The OSCE has five 20-minute clinical stations (anterior segment; glaucoma and lid; posterior segment; strabismus and orbit; neuro-ophthalmology) with real patients and/or video clips, plus a 10-minute Communication Skills station with a simulated patient. Examiners can record a red flag for unsafe practice or inappropriate behavior.

The viva is marked out of 120 and the OSCE out of 198, with pass marks set by the borderline candidate method. You must pass both: a narrow viva fail (within one SEM) can be compensated if you pass the OSCE and reach the combined pass mark, a poor OSCE cannot be offset, and a fail means resitting the whole Oral Component. Results usually come out four weeks after the last exam day, and all candidates get written feedback.

At York in November 2025, 60.1% of 143 candidates passed (pass marks 75/120 and 128/198). You have four attempts. The 2026 fee is £1,395 in the UK, £2,320 for sittings in India, Egypt and Pakistan, and £2,975 for Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore. Upcoming sittings:

The EBO Diploma (EBOD) is one exam sat in a single day, open to certified specialists and final-year residents from 32 eligible countries. Part I, 30 multiple true/false MCQs plus 30 SBAs in 2 hours, is 40% of the final score. Part II, the viva voce onsite or clinical cases online, is 60%: 8 standardized cases across 4 stations worth 15% each, taken as a 60-minute face-to-face viva with 2 examiners in English, or as 80 minutes of typed answers online.

The October 16, 2026 online sitting is closed to applications. The next is online on May 14, 2027 (apply October 1 to December 15, 2026), then in person in Berlin on October 1, 2027. The fee is €600, or €400 for residents from EBO-accredited training centers. The EBO site still quotes a pass rate of about 90%, but its own reports show about 75% (May 2025), 81% (September 2025) and 85% (May 2026).

Questions are open-ended, for example describing an image, giving a diagnosis and differential, choosing investigations and outlining management. Answers are marked against a model answer for content, not length, and listing every possible cause is not rewarded. Since May 2024 onsite and online sittings are scored the same way. Scores are rescaled so the cohort mean minus one SD equals 6. You need 6 overall and in Part I; only one station may fall below 6, and only if your MCQ and overall scores are above 6. Each station holds two cases:

Practice aloud, with a timer, in front of a partner who will interrupt you: ABO examiners may cut in and will not say whether you are right, so rehearse finishing your plan without feedback. FRCOphth candidates should also rehearse ethics, audit and research questions and a 10-minute simulated consultation; online EBOD candidates should practice typing concise answers against the clock.

Start with official material: the ABO's five sample cases and six sample videos (one shows a failing performance), the RCOphth's required reading (OST Curriculum 2024, GMC Good Medical Practice and College policies) and the EBO's structure page. The ABO does not require or endorse any study material, but it names the AAO BCSC series as a reference. Then use one case-presentation template for every practice case:

A question bank does not replace spoken practice, so after each explanation, say the diagnosis, key investigation and management plan aloud in under a minute.

OphthoMentor's oral exam module runs staged cases the way the examiners score them: describe, history and exam, investigations with the results revealed after you answer, differential and diagnosis, then management. You answer aloud or in writing, show the key points and mark each one you covered, and the clock runs per case at 3:30 for the ABO oral or 7:30 for the EBOD viva, grouped by the six ABO topic areas or the four EBO stations. The same case serves both exams. A free account opens the first cases, and any paid plan opens the rest.

OphthoMentor's questions are organized by the 13 BCSC-aligned subspecialties and come with explanations with decision flowcharts, which are useful for rehearsing the step from diagnosis to management. OphthoMentor also has weak-topic drills and resident discussion threads. There is no subscription: Free opens 65 questions, five from every subspecialty, Core ($319, one-time, 12 months) opens the full question bank, and Residency ($619, one-time) gives the same access for 36 months. A free public library of sample questions is at ophthomentor.com/ophthalmology-questions.

Dedicated oral products also exist. As listed on September 26, 2026, OphthoQuestions sells an Oral Boards Prep Course for the ABO oral at $899.00 (117 simulations, 302 flashcards, 115 practice cases; 7 demo simulations without a subscription). Eye Academy and AuroPrep list FRCOphth Part 2 Oral preparation, and ebodtraining.com offers free sign-up with EBOD viva-voce simulation. OphthoMentor publishes this page and is one of the products mentioned.

The EBO says the only learning materials it endorses are those on its own website and that it is not affiliated with third-party training platforms, which covers every product named here, OphthoMentor included.