how to review
a practice test

the common pattern is: sit a practice test, check the score, feel something about the score, read the answer explanations for the ones you got wrong, and book the next test. that loop can be repeated for months without the score moving, which is why people conclude they have hit their ceiling. they have not. they have just been practising taking tests rather than practising the thing the test measures.

mark it in three piles,
not two

right and wrong is not enough information. before you look at any answer, sort every question into:

• confident and right. ignore these. they are done.
• unsure and right. these are the dangerous ones — a guess that landed. on a different day the same question is a miss, so they need the same treatment as a wrong answer.
• wrong. the obvious pile.

doing this sorting during the test costs you a pencil mark next to anything you were not sure of, and it is the single cheapest thing on this page. without it the second pile is invisible and you will keep scoring luck as knowledge.

for every miss, answer
two questions

not one. two.

why is the credited answer right? most people do this. it feels like understanding, and it is half of it.

why did the one you picked look right? almost nobody does this, and it is where the score actually is. wrong answers on a well-made exam are not random — they are written to catch a specific, predictable error. the answer that reverses cause and effect. the one that is true but does not answer the question. the one that is right for the paragraph before. when you name the trap out loud, you start recognising its shape in future questions.

the reasons repeat

keep a running list of why you missed things, in your own words, not in categories someone else invented. after three tests it will be short and embarrassingly specific. things like:

• "i answered the question i expected instead of the one asked"
• "i picked the extreme option when the passage was measured"
• "i did the algebra right and misread the sign in the question"
• "i ran out of patience on the last passage and guessed three"

that list is your actual study plan. it is worth more than any book, because it is about you rather than about the exam in general.

do not take another test
until the review is done

a test you have not reviewed is worse than no test, because it costs three hours and teaches you nothing while feeling like work. the review is usually longer than the test. that ratio is correct and it is not a sign you are doing it wrong.

the part that is hard alone

the second question — why the wrong answer attracted you — is genuinely difficult to answer by yourself, because the answer still looks reasonable when you re-read it. that is the whole design. a second person who can see what you were thinking breaks that loop quickly, which is most of what a tutor is useful for on test prep.

post the question you got wrong and what you picked. test prep pages cover what each exam rewards: sat, act, mcat, lsat, gre and gmat, teas and hesi. for ap exams, the same method applies against a published rubric — see ap courses.