CAA boards - is 10 weeks enough time to prepare from scratch?

10 weeks is enough if you're disciplined about it. I did 8 weeks and passed on my first attempt with a 76%. Pharmacology is worth the extra time you're giving it - probably 30% of my exam touched drug interactions in some form.

The actual boards felt about the same difficulty as a well-made question bank to me. Not harder, not easier. The wording is just different so don't get thrown off if the phrasing feels unfamiliar.

Getting to 78% on practice tests before your real date is a solid target. Hitting that consistently across 3 full-length mocks means you're ready.

Your 64-68% range right now is totally normal for this stage. Most people in my cohort were around 65% at 8 weeks out and the majority passed. Just stay consistent with daily review and don't cram the last 3 days.

Airway management scenarios are huge on the written portion - more than I anticipated. I'd spend at least 25% of your remaining time there. The clinical reasoning questions aren't just recall, they want you to walk through a decision tree.

I failed my first attempt and honestly it wasn't the content that got me, it was the way I was studying. I'd been doing passive review, reading Barron's, watching videos, feeling like I understood everything, but when I sat down for the actual exam the questions were worded in ways that completely threw me off. What changed the second time was drilling practice questions obsessively. I found some free anesthesia assistant principles questions online and started doing timed blocks every single day instead of just reading. That shift alone made a huge difference.

Ten weeks is enough if you're intentional about it. Don't just review what you know, spend most of your time on the stuff that feels uncomfortable. For me that was pharmacology and the physics of gas laws. I'd do a block of questions, bomb a section, and immediately go back and re-read that topic the same day. That feedback loop is what finally made things stick. You've got time, just don't waste the first few weeks thinking you're more prepared than you are.

Ten weeks is doable, I promise. I was working full-time as a surgical tech when I sat for mine and basically had to carve out study time wherever I could find it — early mornings before shift, lunch breaks, the occasional weekend block when my kids were at their dad's. What helped me most was being really consistent rather than trying to cram. I didn't do marathon sessions. Thirty to forty minutes every single day added up faster than I expected.

For content review, the pharmacology and physiology sections are where most people lose points so don't sleep on those. I found free anesthesia assistant principles practice questions really useful for figuring out which concepts weren't sticking yet. Honestly if you've got ten weeks and you're actually disciplined about it, you're in a better position than a lot of people who sit for it. Just don't wait until week eight to start doing timed practice sets — you want that exam pacing to feel automatic by then.