Exam prep guides: SAT, AP, IELTS, and the practice-test method that works for any test (full, timed, graded, then the error log)

The practice-test method works for any exam: take a full test under the real conditions (timed, no notes, the official format), grade it, then log every miss by the skill it tested rather than by the question, drill those skills with retrieval practice, and retake a full test a week later to see which skills moved. Scores change between practice tests, not during them. Below: the method step by step, then the SAT, AP Calculus, AP Chemistry and IELTS guides.

Why practice tests are the whole method, and where students waste them

A practice test does two things at once. It is a test, and the research on testing says that trying to retrieve an answer strengthens the memory of it more than reading it again does. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had students read a passage and then either reread it or recall it; a week later the recall group remembered more. Rowland (2014) pooled dozens of such experiments and found the same advantage across them. A full practice test is also a rehearsal of the format: the timing, the screen or the booklet, the way a question is phrased, the fatigue in the last section. A student who has sat three full tests under the real conditions meets nothing new on the day except the questions.

Students waste practice tests in two ways. The first is to take one, read the score, and file it. A score is not a diagnosis. A 580 in Math tells you nothing about which of sixteen skills cost you the marks, and the next test will cost you the same marks in the same places. The second waste is taking a full test every day. Each one takes two or three hours, the official ones run out, and there is no time between them to fix anything. The score stays flat and the student concludes that practice tests do not work. They work in the week after, not during.

The method, step by step

1. One full test under real conditions. The official timing, one sitting, the official breaks, no notes, no pausing to look things up, and the official answer format (on screen if the exam is on screen; written out if the exam is written). Take it in the morning if the real exam is in the morning.
2. Grade it with the official key. The same day, while you remember what you were thinking on each question.
3. The error log by skill. For every miss, write three things: the skill it tested (not the question number), the kind of error, and the fix. There are three kinds of error: did not know, knew but slipped, and ran out of time. Each needs a different fix, which is why the kind is logged.
4. Rank the skills. Multiply misses by the skill's weight on the exam. A skill missed three times that carries a tenth of the paper outranks a skill missed four times that carries a fiftieth.
5. Drill the top three skills for a week. Use retrieval practice (close the notes, attempt, then check) and mixed sets in which the skill's problems are shuffled with problems from other skills, because the exam will not label them for you.
6. Retake a full test, under the same conditions as the first.
7. Compare skill by skill, not score by score. Did systems of equations go from three misses to none? Did transitions go from three to one? The total will follow; the skills are what you can act on.

The log is a table. Keep it in a notebook or a spreadsheet; the columns are what matter.

Exam	Section	Skill	Error kind	Fix	Retest date
SAT	Math	Systems of two linear equations	Slipped: sign error	Five mixed systems, written out, tonight	7 days
SAT	Reading and Writing	Transitions	Did not know	Name the relationship before choosing the word	7 days

Where the official practice tests are

Use the test-maker's own materials first, and use them as the full tests. Only they match the format, the difficulty and the scoring exactly. For the SAT, the College Board publishes full-length digital practice tests in its Bluebook app, the same app the real test runs in. For AP exams, the College Board's AP Central site publishes the released free-response questions from past exams with their scoring guidelines, and the course and exam description for each subject. For IELTS, the test's own site publishes sample questions for each paper. The addresses are in the sources at the foot of this page.

A prep company's "practice test" is a model of the exam, not the exam. Models are useful for extra drilling once the official tests are used up, and they are the wrong thing to use for the diagnostic, because a model's difficulty and scoring are the company's guess.

Timing: how many tests, how far apart

Spacing is why the drills sit between the tests rather than after them. Cepeda and colleagues (2006) reviewed 254 studies and found that study spread over separate days produced better recall than the same time massed together, at every delay they measured. A week of drills between two full tests puts the skill in front of you on several days, and the second test is the spaced retrieval that shows whether it held.

Weeks to the exam	Full tests	What happens between
8	4, about two weeks apart	A week of drills on the top three skills, then a lighter week with mixed sets
4	3, about ten days apart	Drills on the top three skills; the second log usually names different skills
1	1, on day 7	The seven-day plan: drills on days 6 to 3, a timed section on day 2, a light day 1

With one week, take the test on the first day, not the last. A test taken the night before tells you what you cannot fix. For IELTS, where the four papers are sat separately, the same table applies with one paper at a time counted as a full test.

Worked example: one error log from one practice test

A student takes a full SAT practice test and misses six Math questions. Graded by skill, using the skill names our SAT Math pack uses, the misses are three in systems of two linear equations, two in percentages and percent change, and one in right triangles and trigonometry.

Here is one of the systems misses, worked. The two equations were of the form 2x + y = 7 and x − y = 2 (ours, not an SAT item). Adding the equations removes y: 3x = 9, so x = 3. Then y = 7 − 2(3) = 1. Check in the second equation: 3 − 1 = 2. The answer is (3, 1). The student had subtracted the equations instead of adding them, got x + 2y = 5, and ran out of time untangling it. Error kind: knew it, sign slip. Fix: five mixed systems problems tonight, each written out in full, with the decision "add or subtract?" said aloud before the first line. Retest in seven days.

The log then ranks systems first, not only because three misses is the most, but because linear equations and systems carry a large share of the Math section. Percent change is second. The trigonometry miss, one question in a lower-weight skill, waits for the week after. The SAT guide has a second log from the same test, for Reading and Writing.

The exam guides

The SAT. Where the official full-length practice tests are, how to take one properly (one sitting, the real device, the official timing, guesses flagged), and what to do with the score: the error log by skill with the skill names our two SAT packs use, a worked Math log and a worked Reading and Writing log, and how many tests to take across eight weeks.

AP Calculus AB and BC. What each covers in our words, the exam's two sections, the free-response habit that the scoring guidelines reward (the set-up, the theorem named, the justification, the units), a particle-motion problem written the free-response way, where MCV4U and first-year calculus overlap it, and a six-week plan. The AP Calculus guide.

AP Chemistry. The nine units read as procedures to practise and vocabulary to recall, the free-response habit for a chemistry answer (the equation before the number, the units, the sign of the change), a worked stoichiometry example, and a plan with weeks on it. The AP Chemistry guide.

IELTS. The band descriptors as a checklist you can mark yourself against, timed practice by paper, how to read a sample answer without copying it, and what a week of preparation looks like for a candidate whose first language is not English. The IELTS guide.

Nerves, sleep and the week before

Practice under the real conditions is also the treatment for nerves with the best evidence. Smith, Floerke and Thomas (2016) had people learn material either by restudying it or by retrieval practice, then put half of them under stress a day later before a memory test; the restudy group showed the usual drop in recall under stress and the retrieval group did not. Material learned by testing yourself holds up on the day. The test-anxiety guide has the rest of what lowers nerves and when to talk to someone. The last week is the one-week row of the table above, day by day. And the night before, sleep: the sleep stores the week's work, and the all-nighter guide in the how-to-study section has the measured costs of losing it.

The method, on one screen

1. One full test under real conditions.
2. Grade it with the official key, the same day.
3. Log every miss by skill, with the kind of error and the fix.
4. Rank the skills by misses and weight.
5. Drill the top three for a week: recall, mixed sets.
6. Retake a full test.
7. Compare skill by skill.

Chapter 9 of the free playbook is the seven-day version of this table, laid out as a calendar you can fill in.

Where YSR Studies does the bookkeeping

After a practice test, the SAT Math, SAT Reading and Writing and IELTS Academic packs in YSR Studies drill a skill by the name the error log uses, with each card's answer held until you have tried it, answers checked by code, and the course map marking each skill Learned, Shaky or Not shown yet, which is the error log kept across tests. Five free hours every month, and nothing of any official exam is in the packs.