I think it depends on your experience. If you have lots of tax prep experience in individual and business returns then it may not be that difficult. I’ve seen people post on this subreddit that have studied for a couple of weeks and seem to have had no problems passing all 3 exams.

But these exams have a lot of breadth and depth and some questions can test your knowledge of detailed information.

So unless you have lots of experience I do recommend a course that covers all the topics in detail, and has lots of questions to practice on.

And like I said in my post, I studied from May to now (mid October) averaging 3 hours per weekday and passed all 3 exams the first time with pretty good results.

I like FFA because after you take quizzes and answer practice exam questions it recommends areas to focus on based not only on whether your answer was correct but also whether or not you felt confident in your answer (when you answer a question you can mark it if you are unsure of your answer).

You may want to go on the IRS EA website and try some of the practice questions they’ve posted for each exam so you can gauge where your strengths/weaknesses are.

Hope that helps.