How to Build an Exam Study Plan With Mastery and Topics

Generic study advice tells you to make a timetable. Block Tuesday for algebra. Block Thursday for grammar. The timetable then dies on the first week you are tired, because it was never hooked to anything you can see.

Education on My Path already has the hooks: topic cards with mastery bars, complexity 1–5, a closed topic list, retry-wrong after every sitting, an AI gap report on the sitting you just finished. A plan that ignores those and invents a spreadsheet is a different product’s advice pasted on this one.

This is a study plan that uses the machinery on /education. Not a promise that you will pass a named exam — SAT, GCSE, TOEFL, IELTS, Abitur, and E8 are not even live here — and not medical or clinical advice. Practical: what to sit, in what order, and what to do when a bar does not move.

Start from the topic cards, not the calendar

After you have a Student or Monthly entitlement, the hub is not only test cards. Below (and beside) the Practice shelf, subjects expose topic cards. Each card is a name from the closed vocabulary — Algebra, Geometry, Fractions, Statistics, Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading, Writing — plus a mastery bar, five complexity dots, and a streak if you have one.

The name on the card is the only display name that topic has. It comes from the topic table, not from a slug somebody forgot to translate. If the card says Mixed Problems, that is the label for puzzles that resist a keyword, especially in Kangaroo. It is not “Unclassified.” Do not skip Mixed Problems because the name sounds like junk. Those items are in the bank on purpose.

A plan starts by reading the bars, not by picking a date.

• Grey / empty: you have not sat this topic in this subject yet. That is a placement problem, not a motivation problem.
• Red (started, low): you have signal, and it is weak. This is the week’s work.
• Amber: in progress. Keep it in rotation so it does not decay while you chase a new topic.
• Green, and especially at 80%: topic master badge territory. Maintain with a short sitting, do not abandon, but do not spend the week polishing a bar that is already honest.

Complexity dots are 1–5, “Level n/5” on the card. They are not CEFR and not school grade. They are how far the mastery engine thinks you have reached on that topic. A plan that only chases 60-question sittings at mixed complexity will move the bar slowly and the dots not at all in a way you can read. Sit the topic. Read the dots next week.

Streaks and badges exist — first lesson, perfect score, 7-day streak, topic master, exam ready, polyglot. Mention them so you know the fire emoji is not a bug. Do not centre the week on a badge. The bar is the plan.

One band per week (or per sitting)

Sittings never mix grades. Languages use Level (CEFR A1–C2). Maths uses Grade (3–4 through 11–12). If you tick several, the card rolls one. Your plan should pick the band on purpose.

Pick the band you are actually preparing for. If you are in school year terms that sit on 7–8, do not “warm up” on 3–4 easy and call it the same subject. The items are not the same difficulty dressed in a smaller font. Kangaroo’s easy is the first third of that age’s paper.

A weekly container that works:

1. Anchor sitting — 20 questions, your target band, topics left wide or the two weakest cards, immediate feedback if the topic is new, review-at-end if you already know it.
2. Retry wrong the same day — do not wait until Thursday. The retry-wrong button is the plan’s second session. It is shorter. It is the one that moves the bar.
3. Narrow sitting — 10 questions, one topic from the cards, the complexity you are actually failing, not “all.”
4. Pressure sitting (once or twice a week) — 20 or 60, exam-mode timer, review at end, forward-only if you want paper conditions. Still one band. Still Practice, not a live GCSE.

That is four sittings, not a colour-coded month. If you only do (1) and (2), you still have a system. (3) and (4) are how you stop the anchor sitting from becoming the only thing you ever do.

Default size on the card is 20. Use it. 10 is for the narrow sitting. 60 is for the pressure sitting when the pool can fill it. How sittings are configured is the control reference; this article is the order to press them in.

Closed vocabulary is the syllabus

You do not get to invent topics. The filter only offers what the bank labelled. That is a feature. A plan that says “do trigonometry” when the card says Geometry will not match a sitting you can start.

For languages, the syllabus is four skills × six CEFR levels. Vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing. No listening, no speaking. If your real exam is a speaking test, this bank will not rehearse it. Plan the four skills that exist. Do not wait for audio.

A language week that respects the grid:

• Two sittings at your target Level (say B1), one Vocabulary + Grammar, one Reading + Writing — or four 10-question sittings, one skill each, if mixing skills in one sitting makes the gap report too noisy for you.
• Immediate feedback on grammar and vocabulary. Review-at-end on reading and writing, because those are closer to paper conditions.
• If the B1 grammar bar is red and B1 reading is amber, the next sitting is grammar. Do not “balance” for the sake of a pretty row.

For maths, the syllabus includes algebra, geometry, statistics, number, fractions, and Mixed Problems. General Math is the whole bank; Kangaroo items can appear in it when the filter matches. If you are specifically drilling contest-style items, use the Math Kangaroo card and still pick one grade band. If you are drilling school maths, use General Math and the topic cards.

Mixed Problems get a slot. One 10-question sitting a week on Mixed Problems at your band stops you from only practising items that already have a keyword. Contest maths lives there. So do items that are really geometry but did not want a single tag.

Retry wrong is the plan, not a consolation

Most study systems fail because review is “look at the notes again.” Here, review is a button: Retry wrong answers. It builds a new short sitting from the misses. That is retrieval practice. You do not need a third-party flashcard deck to reconstruct what the review screen already queued.

Rules that keep it from becoming another pile:

• Retry wrong the same day as the anchor sitting, while the stem is still familiar. Waiting a week turns it into a new sitting with extra resentment.
• If you skipped (“I don’t know”), those are skipped, not wrong. They will not appear in retry-wrong. Either retry flagged if you flagged them, or start a narrow sitting on that topic. Skipping is honest; forgetting to come back is not.
• If you got it right by guessing, flag it next time. Retry flagged is for distrust, not for theatre.
• Full retake is for when the whole sitting was a mess, not for when three items were wrong. Full retake redraws. Retry wrong is targeted.

The AI gap report sits next to those buttons. Generate it when the sitting was long enough to have a pattern — a 20 or a 60, not every 10. It spends tokens. Student includes 250 tokens/month; Monthly includes 2,000. The report is about this sitting’s gaps, not a prediction of a university offer. Use it to pick tomorrow’s topic card, then close it. Do not collect reports you do not sit against.

Tokens do not buy sittings. Sittings are the entitlement. For Me and Around Me still include zero Education. Student is €9.99/month with no trial (Get Student — €9.99/month). Monthly is €19.99. GBP mirrors EUR (£4.99 / £9.99 / £19.99); PLN is zł24.99 / 49.99 / 99.99. Plans: /premium.

A four-week shape that uses the bars

Week 1 is placement without a special placement button. Sit 20 at your target band, topics wide, immediate feedback. Read every topic card that moved. The red ones are the syllabus. The grey ones you did not touch are either out of filter or you did not draw them — sit a second 20 if half the row is still grey.

Week 2 is red-bar week. Anchor on the two weakest topics. Retry wrong same day. One Mixed Problems 10 if you are on maths. One pressure sitting at the end of the week with review-at-end, so you find out whether immediate feedback was carrying you.

Week 3 is complexity, not volume. If the bar moved and the dots did not, you are repeating the same band of item difficulty. On the card, tick a higher complexity for that topic only. Keep the grade/level the same. A sitting that jumps CEFR level because “hard B1 felt easy” is a different plan — change Level on purpose, do not wander.

Week 4 is maintenance plus one pressure sitting. Green bars get a 10. Red bars still get the 20 + retry. Read the gap report from the 60 if you sat one. Adjust the topic list. Do not add a second language in week 4 because the polyglot badge exists.

Then repeat. The calendar is four weeks because bars need time to be wrong. A three-day “plan” is just three sittings.

If you are preparing for a real contest date — Math Kangaroo in the world, not on this site — keep Kangaroo on Practice, one grade band, and remember: we are not the official contest, there is no wrong-answer penalty here because editions disagree, and a 24- or 30-task paper’s 3/4/5 weighting is not the same as a 20-question drill. Use exam-mode timer for pressure. Use the real contest’s rules on the day.

What not to do with this machinery

Do not mix grades to “cover more.” The API will not, and the bars would lie if it did.

Do not build a plan around SAT, GCSE, TOEFL, IELTS, Abitur, or E8 on this hub. They are not live. The Exams shelf is empty of named qualifications. Practice first is how the hub is laid out, not a hint that the paper is on the next scroll.

Do not treat IQ as Education. IQ stays under For Me. A cognitive sitting is a one-shot; it does not write a topic bar you can plan with.

Do not skip Mixed Problems, and do not only sit Mixed Problems. The closed list needs both the keyword topics and the leftovers.

Do not spend the week generating gap reports. Sit, retry wrong, sit. Report when you need a name for a pattern you can already half see.

Do not wait for a streak to make you open the hub. The streak is a side effect of the four sittings above. A broken streak is not a reset of mastery.

Open the hub with a band already chosen

Before you click Start practice, decide: subject, one Level or Grade, one or two topic cards, size 20, feedback mode. That sentence is the study plan for the next forty minutes.

Then retry wrong. Then look at the bars. Tomorrow’s sitting is the card that is still red.

Education is exam prep, not a personality test — the distinction if you landed here from For Me. The entitlement is Student or Monthly, on /premium. The work is on /education.