Specific entry competencies are those "prerequisite skills and attitudes that the learners must possess in order to benefit from the training" (p. 58). The idea of prerequisite skills is an important one. The basic understanding that people can only benefit from an educational or training experience if they know the concepts on which the educational experience is based, can perform the basic skills on which advanced skills are to be built, and have the initial set of attitudes which will allow them to develop themselves is fundamental to successful learning. The question that instructional designers face is both to ensure that learners have those prerequisites, and, perhaps more importantly, that prerequisites which have been traditionally required for certain educational experiences actually are prerequisites.

MRK identify two stages at which prerequisites have important functions in designing instruction. The first one, knowing all you can about what is really necessary to learn and using the proposed content, is the one we have been discussing and the one which is most obvious. The second stage, that of testing to ensure that students have those prerequisites, is often ignored or dispensed with. The need to assure that students will all have the best possible learning experience is obviously important, so testing for prerequisites makes sense. This is especially true in business and industry environments where employees are usually being paid to undertake a learning experience and not being able to work at the necessary level not only means frustration and disappointment for the learner, it means wasted money for the employer as well. However, such testing implies that if students do not have the prerequisites something will be done about it. Doing something about it could involve testing far enough in advance to allow students to do remedial work which is provided, or it could involve not allowing them to take the instruction until they had done the remedial work on their own. In either case this involves additional costs and administrative activities, so, frequently prerequisite testing is left to a process of learner self-evaluation and self-selection.