You can PASS PA too

Say it with me! I WILL PASS PA! 
I just got the email, a week after taking PA and I passed on the first try. I'll try to share what helped me.

In total I studied for about 3-5 weeks (1st week being very light effort) but I want to tell you all to study at your own pace... I used to study for a certain number of hours per week and then I realized I was barely spending time with my family or friends. I pivoted to okay I'm only going to study what I don't know from the hyperfine course. So I was studying at most only for about an hour or 2 like 4-5 days a week. What I mean is Don't schedule a test and then cram all this stuff (edited) in, whenever I did this I have always failed. You really have to understand all this stuff even if you don't have a test coming up. Feel confident in the content first. 

I scheduled my exam one week before I took it because I felt confident there wasn't much subject matter on PA I didn't have a little basic understanding of or haven't just been exposed too. There are going to be a couple questions that are foreign but flag it and move on. Answer all the questions you DO know that you CAN answer first then go through the marked and give them your best shot. 

So here's what I used. 

Books! Problem Seeking and Site Planning and Design Handbook. Get both of these! 
Sit down and read Problem seeking. Period. It's the only primary resource for this exam. Highlight pages mark it up with your own acronyms or whatever you like. Part one is good for 5 concepts but part two about calculation net to gross and efficiency's is much more important. I didn't read cover to cover but flagged a lot of calculation pages. 
SPDH book I really only skimmed a few chapters, know about brownfield sites and how to control water flow on site. Memorize ValleyUP / RidgeDOWN for Topo maps.

Designer Hacks quizzes: I used only to begin studying and just understand the broad concepts. Took a LOT of 10 question quizzes until I passed then 25 then kept taking the full for practice. I was not trying to memorize the questions or answers just understand if it was a code question, zoning question, site question, building analysis question. Understanding the broad topics will really launch you into a Pass on this exam. Learn what they are actually trying to ask you don't just memorize practice problems. 

Hyperfine PA course: Once I started feeling comfortable with Designer hacks I used Hyperfine PA course. I wholeheartedly feel that my success on this exam is thanks to Ben from hyperfine. His courses are fantastic and I'll be using him for my remaining PPD and PDD. 

Ballast practice questions book. I have the full ballast book but felt it was so drawn out and I have read a lot of negative against the full ballast. But I used the practice questions book to just answer 3-5 questions at a time after dinner see why i got right or wrong and then jumped back into hyperfine course. 
 
WeARE questions: A friend of mine recommended this site to me. I get that its good but honestly hard questions, I think harder than the real thing but I did this whole PA course in the 2 weeks before I took exam on top of the last week of hyperfine course. Failed the case studies on this but mostly because format isn't great. I would say week 3 of my studies was most effort

NCARB Practice exams: I only took 2 times failed once passed the second. Very good to see how drag and drop questions are. I am impressed with these practice exams some diagrams or graphics look similar while I was taking the real exam so wasn't very foreign. thankful to NCARB for that. 

Feel confident in the content first then schedule your exam is my advice. It will make your mental health and life much more relaxed. Don't go in stressed. If I can do it. You can PASS PA!