Just took and PASSED the exam last week. First try. YAY!!! I would say the questions are a lot more involved than I thought they would be. Lots of "word problems" for the math questions with lots of extra info in each problem you don't need. Sort through and figure out what you need to get to the answer and ignore the rest. Know the formulas so you can do the math. Memorize them and when you get in the test room write them on top of your scratch paper to refer to.
Most of the math problems require you to figure out one thing to be able to figure out another to find the answer. For example, you will be given information (in word problem form) for a subject.....bedroom count, baths, square footage, garage stalls, etc. You will then be given information for 3 comps. You will then have to figure the GRM of the comps to find the values of some of them, but then the actual question to be answered will be how much should the adjustment be for a 2 car garage vs. a 3 car garage. My advice is to make a grid/table and write out the information from the word problem so you can easily compare apples to apples.
There were a lot of cost approach questions, quite a few highest & best use and USPAP. Definitely go re-read your USPAP.
To study, I reviewed all the chapter information from my McKissock courses. It's pretty easy to skim back through all that stuff and find the things you need to review. I did the AI stuff and a website that was recommended on Reddit (see below).
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE, but I will put it here to hopefully help someone else. appraisaltests.com. They claim it's like having the test ahead of time and that the questions are regularly updated to be exactly like the test. All of that is untrue! It does help with review of concepts, but the test is much more complex than that website would lead you to believe. Spend the $40/mo if you want a quick review of stuff, but do not rely on it as your only test prep, it isn't sufficient.
Time management is also CRUCIAL!! You have 4 hours to answer 125 questions. That's under 2 minutes/question. Some of the math questions will take much longer than 2 minutes. I went through the whole exam answering the "easy" ones that I could do in 5 seconds. Then went back to the ones I could spend 30-45 seconds on. Then dove in to answering the more complex ones. I had answered every question with about 30 minutes to spare and I spent the remainder reviewing my work.
One final bit of advice that I did not do. When you are doing work on a scratch paper do it in an organized manner and put the question number by your work so you can easily find it later when you are going back over things. I did not do that and finding the math corresponding to each question took valueable time.
Hope that's helpful to someone!!
