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

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 CLC exams are weighted by domain, and knowing which domains carry more weight changes how you allocate study time.

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.

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.

The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a CLC 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 exactly what I needed when I was studying — someone just telling me what actually worked. I passed in March while working full-time and dealing with two kids under 10, so I get it. The biggest thing I'd add to your schedule is don't skip the risk stuff even if it feels dry. I almost did and it would've killed me on the actual exam. I ended up doing a lot of practice on clc risk assessment mitigation specifically in the last two weeks and it showed up way more than I expected.

One thing that helped me fit it in was treating the 1-1.5 hrs as non-negotiable, like a meeting I couldn't cancel. Some nights it was 11pm after the kids were down but I still did it. You don't always retain everything that late but it builds the habit and honestly the repetition matters more than the perfect study session. Good luck to everyone following this — it's doable, it just takes being really consistent.

I failed my first attempt and honestly it was humbling. I'd been skimming the content outline instead of really drilling it, and I underestimated how much the exam tests application over memorization. What changed for me the second time was slowing down on the ethics and legislative sections specifically — those tripped me up way more than the breastfeeding mechanics stuff which I felt confident about.

The other big shift was doing practice questions daily instead of saving them for the end. Even just 10-15 questions a night kept the material fresh in a way that passive reading never did. If you're in week one right now you've got time to build that habit early, which I didn't. Second time around I passed with room to spare so the schedule in this post is solid, just don't do what I did and treat the practice questions as optional.