This certification took me forever to finally take! I began studying for this one not long after passing my Admin exam and had plans to take it in September or October. As you can see from the date, I ended up not taking it until the very last day of the year!
The delay gave me a bit more time to get hands-on with Salesforce for a few months, which I think actually made this exam a lot easier for me to pass. I had a week with only a couple of meetings in December so I was able to cram for this exam for one last push and then took it on a Saturday afternoon.
I used the study guides and practice tests from Focus on Force to prepare for this exam and found the material to be fairly accurate for this exam.