Passed all - study strategy

Passed all - study strategy

Postby sogevork » Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:14 am

I am waiting to earn some construction hours so I can take the CA exam next.

Here is my strategy for studying for all the other exams.

I gave myself in average 2 months to study for each. (more for BS,SS,BDCS)
I scheduled the exam, then I counted how many realistic studying days I had from that day. I let myself have weekends because I know from the experience what its like to overwork/overstudy and get burnt out.
I gathered all the study materials and split it into pages/notecards/videos/vignettes etc for each study day. I tried to be realistic on how much I can get done per day. Then I studied what I had to per day. When I finished, I felt a sense of accomplishment and wanted to jump into the next days material. This strategy also helped me to know when I am behind and had to "borrow" from my weekends.

Making notecards and learning from them was especially helpful with this approach for CDS,PPP,SPD. I had 10-15 cards per each day. I look over them in the morning. In the afternoon I remembered about half of them. In the evening most. I left a stack of the most difficult ones for the last week, which I usually reserved for review.
I definitely read Ballast for all of them. Made my own note cards and looked at nalsa archiflash for some of the exams.
For some of the exams I read Kaplan, definitely for SS. However Kaplan has a lot more errors
For BS definitely used that book MEEB and the visual dictionary of architecture
For CDS http://www.schiffhardin.com/professiona ... notes-2015
Overall, I failed 3 times (CDS,PPP,SS), SS I passed the multiple choice and failed the vignette, which thought me a lesson to never underestimate "easy-ness" of a vignette.
I'd say generally CDS,PPP,SPD and maybe BDCS are more of "memorizing" types of exams, where BS and SS are "understanding".
It took me 3.5 years. I can now read other things than the study material (and "The Sapiens" book has been waiting for this day)

I want to thank this forum for being a valuable resource. Thank you again to Coach, Sparky83 and everyone else!
sogevork
 
Posts: 60
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:25 pm

Re: Passed all - study strategy

Postby cloudyy » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:29 am

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing your experience with this--makes me feel better that you failed the same exams I did (well not SS bc I switched to the 5.0) and that you have a similar feeling about the "memorizing" vs "understanding" tests.

Are you working as well? You said you let yourself have weekends so I guess you're just studying after work? Having weekends more-or-less free is very appealing to me but also seems really difficult as I'm usually pooped after work.
cloudyy
 


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