First off, 90% is kind of a made up number. What am I talking about? Well, this is more of a mind hack than anything, but one way to help avoid the pitfall of over-spending time on minutia and very fine technical details is to try to target a “90%” understanding of the concepts on your first pass through a fellowship exam syllabus.
I can’t stress enough that you don’t have to become an expert in the syllabus material to pass (or even get a 10). One classic way that people fall behind schedule is spending an extra day (or week) to move their understanding from 90% to 100% on a specific reading, especially for the more technical topics on the syllabus. In other words, that last 10% can be very time-expensive to attain. In your career, it is well worth getting to 100%, but for the exam, that last 10% can kill you.
If this seems ridiculous and silly, just ignore this blog post and keep studying, but hopefully you get the point: get as much of an understanding of the core concepts on your first pass over each lesson within time allotted, then move on to the next.
In the end, you are FAR more likely to pass the exam if you are 80–90% proficient in each reading versus 100% proficient in only 80–90% of the readings.