Finally passed PL-300 after two attempts — here's what actually helped

So I just got my passing score yesterday (878/1000) and I'm still kind of in shock because my first attempt back in March was a disaster — I scored 632 and honestly had no idea what hit me. I thought I knew Power BI pretty well from my day job as a data analyst, but the exam has this way of testing edge cases and DAX logic that you just don't encounter in normal report-building work.

What turned things around for me was being way more systematic the second time. I used a PL-300 practice test site almost daily for the last six weeks, doing timed sets of 20-30 questions and reviewing every single wrong answer instead of just moving on. The explanations mattered more than the score. I also printed out a study guide and worked through the measurement and calculation sections repeatedly because that's where I kept losing points.

If you're preparing right now, I'd say the biggest exam tip I can give is don't skip the row-level security and Q&A visual questions — they show up way more than you'd expect and they're easy to overlook when you're focused on DAX and data modeling. Happy to answer questions if anyone's prepping currently.