Anyone else studying for CMD in the next month? Want to study together

Quick data point: I spent 5 weeks studying, 2-2 hours a day, and passed with a 79%.

The section on CMD exam took me the longest to feel confident about. Eventually I just drilled practice questions until I could answer them without hesitation.

What testing center did you end up booking? Some of them have much shorter wait times than others right now.

For what it's worth from someone who's been through it:

The CMD is one of those exams where the practice tests really do prepare you well. The style of questioning is pretty consistent. If you're comfortable with "CMD" material under timed conditions, you'll be fine.

The one thing I'd add: read the question stems very carefully. They sometimes add a qualifier that completely changes the right answer and it's easy to miss when you're going fast.

Also check whether you need to schedule the exam in advance — some testing centers book up 2-3 weeks out.

Passed my CMD about a year and a half back, so take this with a grain of salt, but the thing I'd tell my 7-weeks-out self is to stop over-indexing on the memorization-heavy stuff. The exam leans way harder on application than I expected — they'll give you a scenario where a brand's positioning is misaligned with the segment they're chasing, or a campaign with a budget allocation that doesn't match the funnel stage, and you have to pick the strategically right move, not recite a definition. Knowing the four Ps cold won't save you if you can't reason about tradeoffs under a fake-but-realistic constraint.

Marketing strategy and the metrics/analytics domains were where I lost the most practice points early on, and where the wording trips people up. CAC, LTV, attribution models, the ROI calculations — they love giving you two answers that are both "correct" but only one fits the objective in the prompt. Read the stem twice. Half my wrong answers in studying were me answering a question they didn't actually ask.

The thing that moved my scores most was drilling full-length timed sets instead of reading chapters again. I used this cmd practice test to get reps on the scenario format and, honestly, to get used to the pacing — running out of time on the back third is a real risk. Happy to compare notes if you want, I still have my weak-area list somewhere. Brand and the digital channels stuff stuck for me; the financial/metrics side took the most grinding.

Seven weeks feels like plenty until you actually sit down and map out everything that's on it — I'm at about the same spot and honestly the strategic planning section is what's killing me. Like I get the frameworks conceptually, but under timed conditions I keep second-guessing which model applies to which scenario. Have you found a good way to drill that stuff, or are you mostly just doing full practice runs?

The content strategy and metrics correlation questions are the other area I keep fumbling. I can calculate ROI and attribution just fine in isolation, but when they embed the numbers in a case study format it slows me way down. Someone in another thread mentioned that doing a cmd practice test with a timer running helped them get comfortable with that format faster than re-reading the material did — started doing that this week and it does feel different than just studying notes.

Would be down to compare weak areas if you want. Even just knowing someone else is stressing about the same sections makes it feel less like I'm missing something obvious.