Failed CARS twice — what finally worked for me after months of struggling

So I've been lurking here for a while and finally made an account because I want to share what actually helped me pass. I failed the CARS exam twice before I finally got my score up to a 172 — honestly thought I was never going to get certified. The first time I just read through the material once and figured I'd be fine. Big mistake.

What turned things around was being way more systematic. I started using a dedicated CARS study guide that broke down each domain instead of trying to memorize everything at once. I also did timed CARS practice test sessions every single day for about six weeks — even just 20-30 minutes on my lunch break. The repetition builds a kind of muscle memory for the question formats that I really underestimated at first.

For anyone else who's struggled: don't sleep on the exam tips in the candidate handbook either. I ignored that thing for months. Has anyone else here found that practice tests were the thing that finally clicked for them, or did you use a different approach?