Study Strategy
I gave myself just over a week to study, which required some serious cramming. I'm originally Canadian, so I had large gaps in my knowledge of US History and pretty much no knowledge of Texas History. My knowledge of World History was decent, with the exception of Chinese History. For Texas History, I went to a used bookstore and found a book that provided a fairly succinct overview of the main points (Texas: A Modern History by David McComb). It largely did the trick. I took notes to distill the knowledge further and then compared the notes with the TExES study guide's domains and competencies and researched what the book left out. I used the Texas State Historical Association website (https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook) to fill in the blanks. For US History, I relied mainly on Keith Hughes' YouTube playlist of videos on the topic (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErKU CncCyBgEdxWAtrj5hg). The quality varies and there can be overlap, but they provided a good high level overview of a number of topics. Again, I took notes and compared them to the TExES study guide and then looked at Wikipedia to skim through articles on what was not covered. As for World History, I brushed up using more of Hughes' videos and Wikipedia articles, concentrating more on Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica. I did not buy any study guides, paying only for the Texas History book and chipping in a donation to Keith Hughes. It ended up being sufficient, especially combined with the TExES free study guide.
Testing Strategy
The test I found to be fairly tolerable. The questions were well-written and the choice of answers fair. If I bumped up against one, it was usually due to my ignorance and not vague wording. I was nervous at first because I was 'marking' a lot of questions to revisit later, but when I went back to them and read them more carefully the answer often became obvious. If I could go back and tell myself what to study more in depth, I would say the colonial years of US History, and to a point, Chinese History. I wish I had reviewed my Texas History notes a little more before the test as well. Basically the World History questions are high level, which is to say, cover the broader, major points and you'll be alright. The US, and to a lesser extent, Texas History questions went into much finer detail. There were also some general questions about teaching history, but these required more common sense than study. I took an hour and forty minutes to complete the test and scored a 277, which feels about right. If I had given myself another couple of days and concentrated on US and Texas History, I would have done better.