In trying to tackle the Series 79 Exam, there is a different level of stress for new graduate test takers. Many in the early part of their career have never had to juggle a full-time job and pass an exam necessary to keep that job. In today’s post, we discuss how to approach this conundrum.
How to Tackle the Series 79: Stick to What’s Important
Like most standardized exams there will be areas in the Series 79 that are easy and others that aren’t. Often this boils down to the individual. What might be easy for you will be difficult for others and vice versa (obviously).
Start out by reading the textbook thoroughly or go through practice videos. Try to get through either of those resources in one week. Ideally this will leave you with two or three weeks of practice questions.
Next comes the part specific to you. Start with a full practice exam even though you know your score might be less than 50%. The idea here is to establish a baseline and get a sense of what content seems to be sticking for you and what does not.
Drilling Questions
Once you have a sense of your weak areas based on your practice exam results, start drilling questions. To do this we highly recommend that you focus only on subsections where your score is relatively low.
Ultimately, filling in gaps is a better way to spend your time than pouring over questions for which you already know the answers. In our experience, a student that knows the answer to a question today is unlikely to get it wrong tomorrow.
For this reason, we recommend you focus on areas that are difficult for you or that require pure memorization. On that note, we even recommend keeping a separate study sheet that includes a list of days, dates, and timelines to remember. These are more easily memorized in one place.
Rinse and repeat doing drills of questions with periodic practice exams at least once per week.
With this rotation over a two or three week period, you should slowly see your score improve. This may be quite different than what recent graduates are used to but with some hard work you’ll make it through! For more help or advice feel free to reach out. Good luck!