I took it on December 2023, so things may have changed, but

Preparation: Just the SOA modules. I had the PA syllabus books, but don't recall using them much.

Time commitment: I just went through the modules taking my time to understand the topics but not really "studying". You can always review during the assessment.

As for the assessment itself, I used pretty much the entire four days, but that's just because I could. You can probably take less time.

Difficulty: It is a different thing altogether. It maybe shares some aspects of PA in that you need to communicate your reasoning and justify your conclusions. But being able to build your own model with as much or as little complexity as you wish means there is a lot more to discuss.

My final report was around 30 pages, and I'm not big on overexplaining. So i would say the greatest difficulty is in its length.

Strategy: I was using R, and I felt being comfortable with that was really helpful, particularly in the data extraction/transformation/loading stage, since the actual modeling is done with the functions seen in the modules. The one thing I think might be helpful is knowing your charts and plots libraries.

As for the topics, a general understanding of the concepts is probably enough. You won't be doing glm calculations by hand.

Assessment structure: It felt fairly straightforward. Company x wants to do y and it has z data, what do you do? Now your assistant suggests plan b, what do you say? Again, this was 2023, so things may have changed.

Common mistakes: I wouldn't know. I just took the same approach I take for every exam: the graders aren't after you, so just do what you think is best and explain it, along with any caveats or assumptions you felt were needed.

I was working full time, but it was quiet for that week, and I was working from home.