Maybe my perspective has changed on stuff like this since becoming a parent, but that’s a sad way to live life. Like JACT said, when you are lying on your deathbed, what are you going to wish you had spent more time with - your family or your textbooks? Sure, you need to set boundaries with your family to avoid getting distracted, but if you need that many hours to study, then start earlier in the year.
It’s certainly not impossible.
Meh, it depends on a lot of things. Your educational and professional background play a big role, as does your affinity for standardized tests. I know a lot of really smart folks who just don’t test well, and vice versa. Also, look at some of the scores for some of these 300+ hour studiers - there are a lot of people with >70% in 8+ of the 10 topics. You don’t think a lot of these people would have passed with 100 less study hours (albeit closer to the cutline)? There’s nothing wrong with being overprepared, but harking back to my first point - I have more important things in my life these days than studying. I was aiming for the minimum number of hours possible to earn a passing score.
Dec '12 L1 I put in a bit over 300 hrs; for June '13 L2 I had very little time - about 200 hrs in total, with 50-60 in the last week, but somehow managed to pass comfortably … although I would have felt far more comfortable if I had an extra 100 hrs under my belt!
I think I may have put in about 100 hours into it. Before you decide to flame, know that I had requisite knowledge from completing a postgraduate degree in a related field and do have good memory. My scorecard was very iffy but, a pass is a pass, I guess.
Good on ya. No passing score is any better or worse than another, and if you had studied 300+ hours, the only difference is that you would have lost 200 hours of your life that you could never have back.