Scored 84% on the CSS exam first try — what I focused on

Just got my results back and I'm pretty happy with an 84% on the first attempt. I was expecting something closer to 75% given how my practice scores were trending. Wanted to share what I did in case it helps anyone prepping now.

I studied for 8 weeks total. The first four weeks were content review — going through all the domain material systematically. The last four weeks I switched almost entirely to timed practice questions. Doing a CSS practice test under actual time pressure was the thing that helped most, honestly. My scores went from around 68% in week 5 to consistently hitting 80–85% by week 7.

The two hardest sections for me were the professional ethics scenarios and the case management applications. They're not hard in a memorization sense — they're hard because the wrong answers are designed to sound right. You really have to slow down and think about what the question is actually asking rather than pattern-matching to something familiar.

I'd estimate I put in about 90 minutes a day on weekdays and 3 hours on Saturdays. That's roughly 60–65 hours of total study time. Felt like the right amount in hindsight, maybe even a bit more than necessary, but I didn't want to cut corners.