[smaccyl]

I am finally back after a 5 year hiatus due to divorce and life threatening illness. I am sending my daughter to my parent’s house for the whole summer, during that time, I will be preparing for FAR. The plan is to take FAR in the fall but I was wondering if I should schedule it for the beginning or the end of the testing window.

I took FAR 5 years ago and failed with a 69. At that time, I rescheduled the test three times making the prep five months. I didn’t feel more prepared, forgot all the material I learned early on and my MCQ scores stayed in the same range. This time, I want to study smarter not longer.

I will start studying in late June and will take the test in the Fall, I am leaning toward scheduling it for early/late October, that would give me three months to prepare for it, and If I fail, I will have enough time to study for the next testing window.

What do you think, and what was your strategy?

[Monkey Wrench]

In my opinion, that is too much time to study. In my opinion you should pick out about 5-7 weeks and go hard studying, then take it. You are taking closer to 12 weeks which you will forget everything you studied before. If you are not careful, you will end up in an infinite loop of, I know early material, know later material, forgot early material, remember later material, remember early material, forgot later material.

When you look at that sequence, there is a time frame at the beginning where you are comfortable with both sets up materials, and I believe that time starts to expire after about 7 weeks.

[smaccyl]

Good point, that's exactly what I am trying to avoid. I am now considering taking it in late August.

[Zuly]

@smaccyl I agree with monkey wrench to schedule in August or even earlier if you can manage it. My biggest recommendation that helped me retain the information from earlier sections learned in FAR was to constantly do cumulative MCQs from previous sections. This way you are keeping the information fresh in your mind vs. getting all the way through the material and then running the risk of having to re-learn the information all over again during your review period.

FAR - (11/01/14) 71 (02/07/15) 79
AUD - (04/30/15) 86
BEC - (07/21/15) 73 (10/01/15) 75
REG - (11/30/15) 55 (05/19/16) 74

[tptpa]

I agree with what has been said. If you have to the whole summer off, you will probably have time to finish two of them. I know a lot of people want to study FAR a ton just so they know that they pass it, but if you have the entire summer, you can definitely get two knocked out.

B- TBD (May 2015)
A- 87 (April 2015)
R- 87 (May 2015)
F- 79 (April 2015)

[smaccyl]

Thanks guys, I will have the summer off of parental duty, but I still have to work full time and act as back up for my boss and two co-workers at different times this summer, it's going to be hectic.

I didn't realize how much time I had initially planned to study until I pulled a calendar and counted the weeks. With the new plan, I will have 10 weeks to study, I won't feel comfortable with less time.

I will make it happen!

[Author]

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