Should I Study for Praxis 5001 or 5205 and 5903, or Both? A First-Year Elementary Teacher Explains
The oat milk latte slid off the edge of the café table and soaked Lila’s crumpled Praxis checklist halfway through our student teaching prep coffee last spring. She stared at the smudged ink, where she’d circled three test codes three times: 5001, 5205, 5903. “I just need someone to tell me which one to study for,” she said, tapping the paper with a chipped pale pink nail. “My advisor said one option covers elementary ed, the other splits it into two, but no one will just say what I actually need to do to get licensed this fall.”
I got it. I’d sat in that same spot 12 months earlier, a half-eaten peanut butter granola bar next to my own checklist, my phone buzzing with a daycare reminder about my 3-year-old’s potty training accident. I’d quit my office admin job the year before to get my teaching license, and every extra hour I spent studying for the wrong test was an hour I didn’t get to spend reading bedtime stories or just sitting on the couch after my toddler went to bed. I didn’t have time to waste on extra content I didn’t need.
We pulled our laptops onto the dry half of the table, and I walked her through what I’d figured out the hard way. First, I told her, stop scrolling Reddit threads and dig up the direct contact info for your state’s licensing department. My advisor had given me outdated info that said only 5001 was accepted, but when I emailed the licensing assistant directly, I got a clear reply 24 hours later that both 5001 (the full combined multiple subjects elementary test) and 5205 plus 5903 (the two split focused tests) met my state’s requirements for a K-6 general education license. That’s the first concrete step no one tells you: advisors are overloaded, handbooks get outdated, and only the state licensing office can give you a definitive answer for your specific situation.
Once you know what’s allowed, you just match the test to your life. For me, 5205 and 5903 were the obvious choice. The full 5001 requires four separate subtests, covering reading, math, social studies, and science, that add up to almost five hours of testing if you take them all at once. I get terrible migraines from long periods of focused screen testing, so that was out. I could split the 5001 subtests across multiple dates, but that would have meant paying four separate testing fees and scheduling four trips to the testing center 45 minutes from my house. I couldn’t swing that with my toddler’s daycare schedule and my part-time work at the school front desk. 5205 and 5903 are just two tests, each around two hours long, so I scheduled them two weeks apart, only two trips, and I only had to study reading and language arts and math. My teacher prep program had already required me to pass in-class content exams for social studies and science, so I didn’t need to study and test for those again. That saved me almost 15 hours of study time I got to spend lesson planning for my student teaching placement.
If you’re set on 5001, that makes sense too, for clear reasons. My roommate in my ed cohort was planning to move to Texas after graduation, and Texas required the full 5001 with all four subtests, no exceptions. If you’re not sure what state you’ll end up teaching in long-term, 5001 is more widely accepted across every state that uses the Praxis licensing system. If you end up moving later, you won’t have to take extra tests to get your new license.
As for taking both? It’s not as common, but it makes sense in specific cases. One of our cohort members failed the math subtest of 5001 twice. The 5001 subtests are heavy on raw content knowledge, and she’d struggled with high school level math even after months of studying. She switched to 5903, which focuses more on how you teach elementary math instead of just testing your own ability to solve hard problems, and she passed it the first time. She already had the rest of 5001 done, so she ended up with both certifications that met her state’s requirements. Other people take both if they want to add an endorsement later—having 5205 can count toward a reading specialist endorsement, for example, so you might get 5001 for your general license then add 5205 and 5903 later to up your qualifications.
I also talked with a parent last month who was getting her license after staying home with her kids for 10 years. She already had a passing score for 5205 from an old program, so she just took the 5903 and the two extra 5001 subtests for social studies and science, which was easier than starting over with the full 5001. That’s another case where combining both options saves time and stress.
Lila ended up going with 5205 and 5903, studied an hour a night after her barista shifts, passed both, and started teaching second grade at a Title I school 20 minutes from our college town this fall. I’m in my first year of third grade, and I still have my old stained checklist tucked in the back of my lesson plan book. Sometimes I think about taking the social studies and science subtests of 5001 next summer, when my toddler will be at day camp for a week and I’ll have a little extra time. I don’t need it right now, but if I ever decide to move out of state for a job, it’ll save me a lot of hassle later. There’s no rush, and there’s no one perfect answer that fits everyone—just the answer that fits your timeline, your budget, and your goals right now.
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