Finally passed my Level II NDT cert after failing twice — here's what worked

So I've been trying to get my Level II UT certification through ASNT for about 14 months now and honestly I almost gave up after the second attempt. Both times I felt decent going in and then got wrecked by the code interpretation questions. My PoI kept telling me to study more but never really said what that meant practically.

What finally clicked was switching from just reading the SNT-TC-1A standard over and over to actually working through a structured NDT practice test bank. I found a study guide that broke down the physics section by concept — beam spread, near-field calculations, attenuation — and drilled those separately before tying them together. Spent about 3 hours a night for six weeks, which sounds brutal but it's what it took.

For anyone prepping right now: the exam tips that helped me most were (1) know your decibel math cold, (2) understand calibration block sequences, not just memorize them, and (3) read every question twice because the wording is deliberately tricky. Happy to answer questions if anyone's in the same boat I was.