Failed the DA — what to do differently the second time

Late to this thread but wanted to add — the exam prep section trips up more people than any other part. If you're scoring below 72% there in practice, treat it as your only focus for at least a week before moving on. Breadth at the expense of depth in that area is a common mistake.

Bookmarking this. I'm still in the early stages of DA prep and threads like this are way more useful than generic study guides. The specifics about practice test are particularly helpful — that's the section I've been avoiding.

Congrats on passing! Can I ask — how many questions did the actual exam have compared to what the practice tests simulate? I've seen different numbers online and want to calibrate my timing during practice.

I failed the DA on my first go too, and the thing that actually moved the needle was accepting that I didn't have big blocks of time to study. I work full time. By the time I'm home I'm wiped. So I stopped pretending I'd sit down for two hours and instead did short bursts, like 20 minutes on my lunch break and another chunk after dinner. Study guide was my weak spot as well, and what helped was drilling questions over and over instead of just rereading notes. I leaned a lot on free data analyst data mining sets because I could squeeze a few in whenever, on my phone, waiting for stuff.

Honestly the consistency mattered more than the hours. Ten minutes a day beats one panicked weekend. You're not behind, you just need a rhythm that fits your actual life. Keep at it.

I failed the DA on my first try too, and honestly the thing that killed me was treating study guide review like a checkbox. I'd read it once, feel like I "got it," and move on. That wasn't enough. Second time around I forced myself to actually use it, not just read it. After every practice section I went back to the relevant part of the guide and reworked the questions I missed until I could explain why the right answer was right, out loud, without looking. Slower, but it stuck.

The other thing I changed was spacing it out. First attempt I crammed the last two weeks and burned out. This time I did shorter sessions over a longer stretch and kept a running list of the topics that kept tripping me up, then hit those harder near the end. If study guide is your weak spot, don't just reread it. Drill it, get stuff wrong on purpose, and figure out the gap. You're closer than it feels right now.