Mocks are expensive. Not financially — cognitively. A mock consumes focus, confidence, and time. If you don’t debrief it properly, you’ve paid the cost without extracting the value. High scorers treat mocks as datasets that drive the next week’s plan.
The goal of a mock
Not to prove you’re ready. It’s to reveal (1) your timing bottleneck, (2) your error pattern, and (3) the smallest set of fixes that move the score fastest.
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Step 1 — Build a timing map (10 minutes)
Record: overall time, sections where you slowed, and where you guessed. Your bottleneck is usually predictable (e.g., stems with lab data / long vignettes / uncertainty questions).
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Step 2 — Classify every wrong answer (15–25 minutes)
Use one label per miss (knowledge / misread / confusion / overthink / timing). This reveals the highest-yield fix.
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Step 3 — Extract ‘rules’ not ‘facts’ (30–45 minutes)
Turn each miss into an exam-shaped decision rule + one trap line. Rules transfer. Facts often don’t.
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Step 4 — Convert into a 7-day plan (10 minutes)
Pick the top 3 themes by frequency/impact. Schedule: (a) focused Q-bank blocks, (b) daily retrieval prompts, (c) one mini-mock at day 7 to confirm closure.
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Step 5 — Run a closure check (Day 7)
Your follow-up should be targeted: re-test the weak themes, not a random set. You’re confirming that the loop worked.
Common failure mode
Doing another mock immediately. You’re repeating the expensive diagnostic test without treating the disease. Debrief first, then re-test.
SourceRoediger & Karpicke (2006) — Test-enhanced learning foundation (PubMed)
Open Link SourceDunlosky et al. (2013) — Why retrieval + spacing beats passive review
Open Link