I've been prepping for the TDA for about 6 weeks now and honestly I'm not sure if I'm doing enough. I'm spending around 2 hours a day on practice passages and close reading exercises, but my mock scores are hovering around 68–72% and I need at least 75% to pass.
The text-dependent analysis portion is tricky because you really have to cite evidence from the passage rather than pulling in outside knowledge. My biggest weakness is structuring my written responses — I tend to rush through the analysis and miss key textual details in the last 20 minutes of each timed section.
Anyone who's passed recently, how many weeks out did you start feeling genuinely confident? I'm taking it in 3 weeks and still feeling shaky on the extended response prompts specifically.
Took me 4 weeks studying about 90 minutes a day to feel ready. I used a color-coding system when annotating practice passages and it helped me locate textual evidence faster during timed runs.
I passed with an 81% after about 8 weeks of prep. The written analysis section tripped me up at first too — I started setting a 5-minute planning timer before writing and that made a real difference with structure and staying on topic.
I failed my first attempt at 69% and came back 6 weeks later with a 78%. The biggest shift was focusing on how the author uses specific word choices rather than just summarizing the passage. Don't underestimate the multiple choice either — it's worth roughly 40% of your total score.
Three weeks out is fine if you're consistent. I'd prioritize full timed practice runs over isolated drills at this point — time management was the main thing that sank people in my testing session, not content knowledge.