My 8-week CBDA study schedule (free resources only)

What do you think about condensing this to 4-5 weeks if I can do 2-3 hours per day? I have a test date that's sooner than I'd like and trying to figure out if I can make it work.

The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a CBDA deck with about 200 cards covering all the key terms and formulas. Doing 20 cards/day during my lunch break added up faster than I expected.

This is gold. Saving and sharing with my study group. The "stop studying 24 hours before" advice is underrated — I bombed an exam once because I crammed until midnight and couldn't think straight in the morning.

Great breakdown. One thing I'd add to Week 1: look at the score breakdown from your baseline practice test — not just the overall score. Most CBDA exams are weighted by domain, and knowing which domains carry more weight changes how you allocate study time.

Just wanted to drop in and say this schedule is really solid. I'm in week 5 right now and finally starting to feel like things are clicking. Took the cbda statistical analysis methods 2 practice test last night and scored a 74, which I know isn't amazing but it's up from the 61 I got two weeks ago so I'll take it.

Planning to sit the real exam in mid-August. Honestly the statistical analysis piece was the part I was most scared about going in, it wasn't as brutal as I expected once I slowed down and actually worked through the problems instead of just reading the explanations. Thanks for sharing this, it's been way more useful than some of the paid study plans I've seen floating around.

Quick update since a few people asked -- just finished week 5 and I'm actually feeling pretty good about where I'm at. Took a full practice exam over the weekend and scored a 74%, which I know isn't passing yet but honestly wasn't expecting that after only a month in. The data governance section is still killing me though, so I've been spending extra time there this week.

I'm planning to sit the real thing in early September, which gives me about three more weeks after I finish this schedule plus a little buffer for a final review push. If you're following along and feeling behind, don't stress -- weeks 3 and 4 were rough for me too and it clicked a lot more in week 5. Stick with it.

I failed my first attempt and honestly it was because I spent too much time reading and not enough time actually doing practice questions. I thought if I understood the material I'd be fine, but the exam is tricky about how it phrases things and I wasn't prepared for that.

Second time around I flipped the ratio — did questions first, then went back to review whatever I got wrong. That feedback loop taught me way more than passive reading ever did. Also don't ignore the data governance sections like I did the first time. It's not the flashiest content but it shows up more than you'd expect.