How many weeks did you actually study for RSS? Be honest

What helped me most with practice test specifically: stop thinking about it as a topic to memorize and start thinking about the types of decisions it's asking you to make. Once I shifted to that frame, my RSS scores in that section jumped about 13 points within a week.

Great discussion. One thing nobody mentions: sleep the night before matters more than one more study session. Went in fully rested for my RSS and felt sharper than expected.

The advice about understanding why wrong answers are wrong — not just memorizing right ones — is genuinely the best RSS advice in this thread. Rebuilt my prep around that and it made a real difference.

Honestly? 6 weeks is plenty if you actually use them. I work full time too and I did about the same as you, an hour or two after dinner most nights, sometimes nothing on the weekends because life happens. The trick for me wasn't cramming more hours in, it was being consistent. I'd do one section a night and then just hammer practice questions until I stopped getting the same stuff wrong. Don't try to read every page front to back. You'll burn out and you won't remember half of it anyway.

What really moved the needle was reviewing my wrong answers instead of chasing new material. I kept a little note on my phone of topics I kept blanking on and hit those again the next night. By week 5 I was scoring high enough on the practice tests that I actually felt calm walking in. So yeah, 1-2 hours a night for 6 weeks got me there, and I'm not some genius who tests well. Just show up every night and trust it. You've got this.

I'll be honest, I gave myself 8 weeks and around week 4 I was ready to just eat the exam fee and walk away. Nothing was sticking, especially the regs and the risk assessment stuff, and my practice scores were bad enough that I figured I wasn't cut out for it. My wife basically talked me out of canceling. So take my skepticism with a grain of salt because I was you, but more pessimistic.

Here's the thing though. Somewhere around week 6 it started clicking, and I think it's because the first month I was passively reading and the last few weeks I switched to doing practice questions almost exclusively. That's when it actually came together. Passed on my first try, not by a huge margin but a pass is a pass. Six weeks at 1-2 hours a night is tight but doable if you're doing questions and reviewing what you missed, not just rereading chapters. Don't quit at your week 4 wall. Everybody hits it.

I had 5 weeks and honestly a similar setup to you, full time job and maybe 90 minutes a night if I wasn't wrecked. What saved me was being ruthless about it. I didn't try to read everything cover to cover. I did practice questions first, figured out where I was weak, and only went back to the material for the stuff I kept missing. For me that was hazard analysis and the regulatory sections. Everything else I just reviewed lightly.

The other thing that helped was using dead time. I'd run through flashcards on my phone during lunch and listened to recorded notes on my commute, which sounds cheesy but it adds up to a few extra hours a week. Weekends I did one longer session, like 3 hours Saturday morning with a full practice exam. Passed on the first try. You've got 6 weeks, that's plenty if you're consistent and you stop studying what you already know. Don't let the 3 month crowd freak you out.