Nerve Racking... but I passed!
Wanted to come on here and share my experience studying for Series 79 and taking the exam.
My prep before "the blend":
- watched videos on 1.5x speed & took notes
- did 20 question quizzes on all chapters
Honestly didn't retain much and went into the week before testing feeling like i knew nothing...
During "the blend":
- The first two days I was a bit too lax and just did 50 questions and went to the reveiew sessions
- Day 3 is when I hunkered down and would do 30-80 question quizzes throughout the day and thoroughly review my work.
- Took diagnostic 1 4 days before the exam and scored a 63% and diagnostic 2 2 days before and scored a 65%. This definitely stressed me out so the last three days I would study for 15 hours nonstop. This involved:
- key concept flashcards
- 20 question quizzes on lowest scoring sections
- creating my own flashcards on topics I missed
- writing down my notes (found that I rememberd material when I physically wrote rather than typing)
- talk through the concepts out loud
- 2, 50 question quizzes a day on all topics
- watched all the review sessions on knopman and their youtube channel
This helped to the point where by the time I took the benchmark 1 day before I had scored a 78%.
My last day prep involved:
- reading / taking notes on Key Concept Update Email
- key concepts flashcards
- thoroughly reviewing missed concepts from benchmarks - highly rec using Copilot and Claude as a tool to understand concepts and come up with ways to memorize
- taking notes on my notes
- last review video I hadn't watched yet
- watched vizualizing success video (underrated, I went to sleep feeling confident and went into the exam imagining passing)
Regarding the exam, some questions were easier thank Knopman and more definition based but I knew I had underpreppared on the math. Had some IIR / Accretion Dilution / Treasury Stock questions I didn't prepare enough for. Overall I would consider the exam to be nearly as difficult as the Knopman exams. Had to close my eyes as I clicked submit and nearly shed a tear when I saw "Pass."
Wishing you all luck with the exam. Learn from my mistakes and take the entire week before the exam seriously. Do the 1000+ practice questions, drill the key concepts, cover some more math questions, trust yourself and you'll be good to go! Happy to answer any questions.