Reduce Your Exam Preparation Time from Six Months to Six Weeks!

I occasionally hear stories of panicked students who need to extend a course because it's expired, and they didn't even write the exam. Others need to re-enroll, and industry licensing courses aren't cheap. Many who do succeed at the exam take a full year to prepare when they could have prepared in as little as six weeks with one of SeeWhy Learning's study packages.

For most of the exams we support, six weeks of part-time study is a very reasonable time frame. So why do some students take a year or more to prepare? Quite often, students tend to study for a bit; then life gets busy and they stop studying. When they eventually get back to studying, they have forgotten much of what they learned and need to backtrack. They repeat this process several times. What a waste of time! If they wind up passing the exam, it's usually only because they finally buckled down a month or so before their eventual exam date. So why not avoid all that and just crunch your preparation time down to a shorter period right from the start? Commit to a future exam date today and book it. This one simple decision alone can set you up for success. Let's face it; your loved ones may even prefer to see a little less of you for only six weeks than deal with a stressed-out you for a much longer time.

The moment your exam is booked, you will have money on the line should you fail—a re-write fee that could be hundreds of dollars. This fee will serve as an additional motivator to stick to a planned study session instead of bailing on it for coffee with a friend. With each passing day, you'll know your exam date is getting closer, and you'll know you need to be studying. It's human nature to focus on things that are more likely to impact you in the short term. This is why people will even avoid paying the government money owed in order to make a mortgage payment. They know if they miss a mortgage payment, it won't be long before the bank comes calling. Likewise, knowing your exam date is six weeks away is going to help you keep studying in the forefront of your mind.

So why six weeks? In my opinion, passing or failing usually comes down to what the student did in the six-week period prior to the exam, not what he or she read six to twelve months before. There's usually a lot of memory-based information in the course that you're not likely to remember several months down the road. For example, I bet most financial advisors couldn't recite the present value of an annuity formula verbatim, nor should they be expected to.

So go ahead and commit to a future goal, and book your exam today. Even if you come up short on the exam, you'll definitely know more than you would have otherwise. You'll also have a better idea of what to expect when you re-write the exam. While the goal is obviously to pass on the first attempt, in the grand scheme of your career, whether you passed the first or second time won't have much of an impact on your future success. If you follow this tip, I'm confident you'll be successful. Next week I'm going to discuss some strategies that will help you stay committed to your goal.