Administrator Study Cohort

Passed my admin test for the first time yesterday morning (yay!).  Big thanks for @Caitlin Nguyen's presentation and guidance!  I made some notes regarding my personal opinion on what it took to pass the test.  I will be honest - by the time I got to question 30, I was certain I had failed, but I pressed on.  Apparently, I randomly clicked the right answers :)

Without further ado, here is how I passed the admin test on the first try…

1. Read and DO everything.  Experiment with your dev org, play the "what if I do this?" game as you're learning new things.  Trailheads, Hands-on work, and Salesforce documentation are literally all you need to prep for the test.  For me, I used external sources (below), but they're not necessary (although I found the practice tests were awesome)
2. Look at the percentage of questions relative per study area.  If you don't firmly understand the ones with 8% or higher, don't bother with the smaller ones.
3. Study every day with purpose. For me, I studied a total of 80 "focused" hours to prepare for the test
4. I used several sourced for online tests - Mike Wheeler's Udemy courses, SalesforceBen.com, and FocusOnForce.com.  Of those three, FocusOnForce had an amazing study guide and great practice tests.  Although I will quickly add that the test questions were NOT identical (at all), the themes were similar and almost all questions were scenario-based.  Speaking of which…
5. Almost all questions on the test are scenario-based.  You can NOT just remember a bunch of facts and spit them out.  You need to know what data matters and what data doesn't in each question.  Then you need to see if the answers have subtle differences.
6. When you take practice tests - do five things
   1. Write a list of numbers, 1-60 (one for each question)
   2. Make a mark by the questions you think you got right and the ones you had no clue/weren't sure.
   3. Make a mark by questions that have multiple answers.  Some practice tests, like FocusOnForce, don't stop you if you give too many/few answers.  Fortunately, the actual exam checks that.  By building a habit of checking for multi-answer questions, you start cultivating more awareness of how you need to THINK about the question.
   4. When reviewing the answers, mark which ones you got right and wrong.  Compare that list to your original "estimated" answer (see b.).  This is an excellent way to give yourself feedback on situations that are blind spots (Had No Clue + Got answer Wrong), Lucky guesses (Had no clue + Got answer right), Overconfidence (Sure you were right + Got answer wrong), or strong areas (Sure you were right + Got Answer right).
   5. For each question that was NOT a "strong point" score, make notes about the information from the test review (you get that on FocusOnForce).  Use those notes to decide if you need to re-study a section
7. I cannot overemphasize: Understanding "Who can create/edit what" and "who can see what" pretty much summarizes about 2/3rds of the test.  Trust me on this.