Is the BCBA exam as hard as everyone says? Share your experience

I'm about four months out from my target exam date and the horror stories I keep reading online are starting to get to me. People say the bcba certification exam has a pass rate below 50% for first-time takers, and I'm not sure how much of that is people being underprepared versus the content actually being brutal.

I've been working through the task list systematically and feel reasonably confident in measurement and behavior change procedures, but the ethics and experimental design sections feel slippery. The wording on practice questions is often tricky — two answers seem almost identical and I can only tell them apart sometimes.

For those who've passed: what did you wish you'd studied more? Were there whole domains that surprised you on test day? I've been using the BCBA Ethics for Behavior Analysts practice quiz set regularly, which has helped me stop second-guessing basic professional boundary questions. But I still feel shaky on complex ethical dilemmas with competing contingencies.

Any study timeline advice for the final stretch would be genuinely appreciated. I'm aiming for three focused study hours daily alongside my full-time ABA job.