Struggling with NECA exam on NECA practice tests — any tips?

Quick update for this thread: just cleared 87% on my most recent NECA practice set. The neca electrical code & standards has been my main resource and the difficulty feels right — not easy enough to give false confidence, not so hard it's discouraging. Sitting for the real thing in 4 weeks.

Coming back to this thread — just passed my NECA yesterday. Everything about the neca practice test section is accurate. For anyone still studying, the free neca electrical theory principles was the closest thing to the real exam I found.

Failed first attempt, came back to this thread. The consensus on neca practice test being the make-or-break area is right. Focusing almost exclusively on applied questions this time around.

I'm a full time electrician with two kids so I get the freezing up thing completely. What worked for me wasn't more practice tests, it was changing how I did them. After I missed a scenario question I'd stop and force myself to say out loud why the right answer was right, not just read the explanation and move on. Sounds dumb but that's the gap. You know the theory cold, you just haven't practiced turning it into a decision yet. The tests are testing the second thing.

For the schedule part, I gave up on long study sessions because they never happened. I did 15 or 20 minutes on my lunch break and maybe one longer block on Sunday morning before everyone woke up. Little and often beat the weekends I planned and then skipped. Honestly once I started treating the scenario questions as the actual skill instead of something I was bad at, the scores came up within a couple weeks. Don't panic over 8 tests, you're closer than it feels.