For my first attempt, I read through the whole 2021 ACCP book 2-3 times, did the ACCP mock exam and had a score of 6x. I expected I would receive a pass in the real exam but ended up I found the exam difficult and had a score of 476, which was quite disappointing. The spring exam did not have a lot stat questions and there was a lot random question like malaria, acne, psoriasis. Not many questions on cardiac, women/men health topic.
I asked people for advise and found that people may or may not have the same questions and their exam content can be quite different too. So i guess BCPS has a big pool of questions and I decided to start all over again (I believe some may only focus on stat content but i just could not risk it again as my spring exam had only a few stat questions). For fall exam prep, I used 2022 ACCP (they changed some of the content quite a bit. such as vaccination, std) and HYMR review course. I made my own notes this time when I go through the book, since I know I would not have enough time to read the whole book again. I think making my own notes really helps because Accp book has too much information. You wouldn't know what you MUST know, and is impossible to memorise eveything. In order to overcome this you just need to do more question bank, so you know what you missed. I spent quite a lot of time to do HYMR questions bank and found them very useful (despite sometimes they can go really deep then i would skip those questions) I did not finish all the HYMR questions bank (skipped policy, cancer) before fall exam because I only had 8 weeks to study. but in general I think it helped quite a lot in understanding the topic as their explanation was really quite good. and HYMR question bank did help me to be a better test taker. Throughout the whole study journey I also looked up some guidelines myself (not a lot but I did it from time to time), as content in ACCP book can be quite confusing sometimes. (e.g. digoxin therapeutic level for HF vs AF. not enough information on DM chapter. Anti-epileptic drugs/information all over the place)
Then one week before fall exam I took ACCP mock exam 2022 and 2021 (which I bought for spring exam) . Apart from the questions I did wrong, I also studied those questions I did correct. I think this is a good way to learn since sometimes you may make a guess on the answer and fortunately it is a correct choice. But you would never know there is knowledge you are still lacking if you do not review these "correct answers". I also reviewed BCPS content outline (you can find it on their web) and it was also useful! I have no idea on some of the topics it lists, but can be looked up easily and it did help to answer some of the questions in real exam.
For fall exam, there were more stat questions (finally!) and had quite a few questions on cardiac, antibiotic, vaccine and ONCOLOGY (almost 10 questions on it). I feel glad that I did try to study all the topics again for fall exam (I know this can be frustrating but you cant risk to fail again can you?). I walked out the exam feeling more confident this time and cannot wait to see my score.
This is my own experience and it had been really tough to study for so many months this year (Feb-May for spring exam and Aug-Sept for fall exam). And I am really thankful to those who gave me advice and support in this thread. I hope this would help you guys to figure out a better way to study for the exam! Trust me. You can do it too.