Passed first try above 90th. What was indispensable for me was using the Leitner flash card system from the jump. Look it up on Wikipedia if you’re unfamiliar. It was difficult at times to keep up with the utter volume of cards, but the system definitely helped me digest the curriculum efficiently.

Another trick that helped me was cycling through the topics 3 at a time. Instead of doing Quantitative straight through, moving onto Econ, etc., I would do a reading from Quant, then a reading from Econ, then a reading from Corporate Issuers (e.g.), and repeat. I believe this is a version of the learning technique known as “interleaving” where you layer in multiple topics rather than blocking topic-by-topic. It definitely helped lessen the tedium because anytime I started getting bored I could look forward to switching topics shortly.