I've been studying for about 5 weeks now and I'm trying to figure out how to use practice tests effectively. I'm currently scoring between 68-74% on practice exams and I'm shooting for at least 78% on the real thing. I do about 1.5 hours of study every day, splitting time between reviewing content and doing practice questions.
My current approach is to do a full practice test every Saturday, then spend the following week drilling topics where I got under 60%. The problem is I've already burned through most of my available practice tests and I'm wondering if redoing the same ones defeats the purpose, or if re-taking them with fresh eyes a few weeks later is still useful.
I've got 3 weeks left until my exam date. Should I shift away from practice tests and do more focused content review, or keep hammering questions? I feel like at this point I learn more from wrong answers than from re-reading chapters, but I don't want to miss a major content gap I haven't found yet.
I went from 71% to 83% in my last 3 weeks by doing 40 questions/day on weak topics only and spending 20 minutes reviewing every single wrong answer. No full practice tests after week 3. Passed with a 79%.
Redoing practice tests is less useful than you'd hope because you start remembering specific answers rather than actually knowing the material. If you've exhausted your question bank, find new question sources rather than recycling the same ones.
Three weeks out with a 68-74% average, I'd keep doing questions but switch to topic-specific sets rather than full exams. Full practice tests are great for building stamina early, but targeted drilling on weak areas moves your score faster at this stage.
Your instinct about learning from wrong answers is right. Make a simple spreadsheet tracking which topic each wrong answer falls under. By exam week you'll have a clear picture of your real gaps versus the topics you just feel anxious about.
I failed my first HIC attempt and honestly it was because I kept doing the same practice tests over and over until I had the answers memorized, not the concepts. What actually helped me pass the second time was switching to unfamiliar question sets, specifically the free health inspector food safety sanitation questions which covered stuff I hadn't seen in my main study materials. I went from hovering around 70% to consistently hitting 80+ before I retested.
If you're at 68-74% you're closer than you think, but I'd stop repeating tests you've already done. Do new questions cold, check every wrong answer immediately, and don't move on until you understand why the right answer is right. That's it. That shift alone made the biggest difference for me.