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

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.

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 ACC 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.

The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a ACC 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.

Failed my first attempt back in March and honestly the thing that bit me hardest was assuming I knew the dementia care material because I'd been doing hands-on caregiving for years. Practical experience and test knowledge are two different animals. The exam goes deep on communication techniques for different stages — early vs. late stage Alzheimer's, Lewy body, vascular — and I kept conflating them during the actual test because I'd just read through the content outline once without really drilling those distinctions.

What changed for my second attempt: I stopped reading and started testing myself way earlier. After week two I was doing practice questions on every domain, even when I felt shaky on the material. The discomfort was the point. I also spent extra time on the ethics and professional boundaries section because it felt dry and I kept skipping it — big mistake the first time around, those questions showed up more than I expected. Caregiver scope-of-practice stuff especially.

Your schedule looks really solid, and the 1-1.5 hrs/day is sustainable if you actually protect it. One thing I'd add: in your last two weeks, do a full timed mock run under test conditions. Not just loose practice questions — sit down, no phone, simulate the real thing. I didn't do that before my first attempt and the time pressure caught me off guard. Second time I sailed through with 20 minutes to spare.