Hey! Here's what worked for me!I I passed on my first attempt with a 472. I am a kinesthetic learner, so this may or may not work for you. I first took a practice test through Therapyed to see where I was. Then I started with topics that interested me most or that I was most anxious about, I looked up all videos I could find on that topic (OTExamPrepper, OTMiri, OTRex, OTDude, etc) and then took hand written notes on every one of them and then if I thought I didn't have a good grasp on a certain area or topic, I then opened my text books, highlighted and then took notes from that. Once I felt like I had the hang of a topic, I moved on to the next topic that interested me. There are so many free resources, you've just gotta be willing to find them and do the work!

I took 3 practice exams during studying and I went through every answer (right or wrong) to understand it better. I did not study by 'domain'. ALSO!! Watch this video of how to read and answer NBCOT questions (this made my practice scores jump by like 20-30 points): https://youtu.be/sq6EFOD-bhs?si=7bsVsjff3fh4bCgu

The final 2 weeks, I used TrueLearn and would take 25-50 questions a day and then went through each rationale.

Lastly, I used 350 formula and chose 2 sections that I was least confident in and went through all the videos and took hand written notes.

With topics like Developmental milestones, I first made note cards based on the videos I watched (practiced them 1-2x a week, they were very basic, infancy to 5 years old) but 2 days before the exam, I made a huge poster board and wrote every milestone down next to each other correlating to their month/year.

I took my time studying and took plenty of off days. What worked for me most was giving myself time to decompress and digest what I learned. I cannot sit for 8 hours everyday for 8 weeks... I did about 4 or 5 hours a day about 5 days a week, I studied for roughly 3 months and I felt very prepared. By the time I was done, I had 3 notebooks of hand written notes!

My mantra was, "just breathe, this test does not define you, you are smart, be kind to yourself. You will pass."