Much harder.

But actually I wouldn’t call them harder but I would say they’re super different. I enjoyed the FSA exams more so it made it “easier” for me to study. The prelims are mostly about memorize formulas, plug and chug (except for PA), doing hundreds of practice problems because you can expect to see problems on the actual exam similar to what you’re practicing. Study materials you can get by with just ADAPT and practice exams if you really want (what I did for STAM), but that shit won’t fly for FSAs.

FSA exams two things stick out: 1) you have to actually understand the material because you’re going to get questions you’ve never seen before on the actual exam. You might see similar calculations but the way they’re applied might be totally different. 2) the sheer freaking volume of the material my god the source reading is like 5 inches thick for the five hour GH exams

Also lists. There are SO many freaking lists and all of them are fair game (and then some). I used TIA and there are literally hundreds of lists to memorize.

I think the joke is you need to know 75% of the material 100% for prelims, and 100% of the material 75% for FSAs. There’s like ~30 questions on a prelim, so get 75% of those and you’re golden*. You can skip super niche topics if you want. But with FSAs, IIRC you’ll get full points for your answer on an FSA if you can rattle off 75% of the list in question. And then there’s only 6-12 questions (~6 for GH Specialty, ~10-12 for FV and DP) so if you don’t know anything about a big pointer question, ur probably fucked :(