Building a Study Plan

A plan begins with two honest numbers: how many weeks you have until the exam, and how many focused hours you can give on a normal day. Multiply them for a rough total budget, then cut it by a fifth for illness, travel and bad days.

Everything else is fitting the syllabus into that budget. If the budget is small, the plan is about triage - protecting the high-weight sections - not about covering everything.

Before writing any schedule, sit one full-length mock under time. It is uncomfortable this early, and that is the point: it converts a vague sense of "I am weak at reasoning" into a per-section score, an accuracy figure and a list of topics you could not touch.

Rank the sections by the gap between your score and a rough target. The largest gaps get the most slots in the first half of the plan. Re-diagnose with another full mock every two to three weeks and re-rank.

Touch every section every week. Spending all of March on quantitative aptitude and then all of April on reasoning means the March work has faded by the exam.

A workable weekly shape:

• Learning (about 40 percent): new concepts and worked examples from the two or three weakest topics that week.
• Practice (about 40 percent): timed problem sets on those topics, plus mixed sets on topics already learned.
• Revision (about 20 percent): a fixed slot to re-work old error logs and one-page summary sheets.

Keep one full mock a week from the halfway point, on the same weekday and time as the real exam if it is known.

Each week, record per section: questions attempted, accuracy, and time spent per question in the mock. Attempts alone hide a rising error rate.

Read the trend across weeks, not a single week. Accuracy climbing while attempts hold steady is real progress; attempts climbing while accuracy falls is not. Let these numbers, not the feeling of a productive week, decide what changes.

A generic plan for twelve usable weeks. Dates are deliberately omitted; slide it onto your own calendar.

The shape is the point: learning front-loaded, mocks back-loaded, revision throughout, and a deliberate wind-down in the last week.

• A section stuck below target for two mocks running gets one extra weekly slot, taken from your strongest section.
• A plateau - accuracy flat for three weeks despite steady practice - means the method is wrong, not the volume. Change approach: relearn the concept, study worked solutions, slow down before speeding up.
• A sudden drop is usually fatigue or a hard mock, not a real regression. Do not rewrite the plan on one bad data point.
• Never scrap the whole plan. Adjust one or two slots and keep the structure; repeatedly restarting is itself a failure mode.

• Start from two numbers: usable weeks and focused hours per day. Cut the total by a fifth for bad days.
• Sit a diagnostic mock before planning; rank sections by the gap to target; re-diagnose every two to three weeks.
• Rotate weekly so every section is touched every week. Rough split: 40 percent learning, 40 percent practice, 20 percent revision.
• Record attempts, accuracy and time per question per section; act on the multi-week trend, not one week.
• Front-load learning, back-load full mocks, revise throughout, taper the last week with no new topics.
• Adjust one or two slots when the mocks say so; never restart the whole plan.

Pick the best response and give a one-line reason.

1. You have 9 weeks left and have covered no reasoning at all. Do you (a) spend weeks 1 to 5 only on reasoning, or (b) start a weekly rotation now with reasoning getting the largest share?
2. Your DI accuracy has been stuck at 55 percent for three weeks despite daily practice. More practice sets, or something else?
3. You have collected four books and three question banks for quantitative aptitude. Next step?
4. A single bad mock drops your reasoning score 8 marks below the previous three. Rewrite the plan?
5. It is the final week. You realise you never studied one whole topic. Learn it now?
6. You feel you had a very productive week, but attempts rose and accuracy fell. Productive?

Answers. 1 (b) - a monthly block fades by exam day; rotate and weight reasoning. 2 Change method, not volume - a three-week plateau means relearn the concept and study worked solutions before adding sets. 3 Choose one book and one bank and start; resource-collecting is avoidance. 4 No - one data point against three is likely a hard mock or fatigue; keep the plan. 5 No - the last week is taper and revision; a new topic trades certain marks for uncertain ones. 6 No - accuracy down with attempts up is not progress; the trend, not the feeling, is the measure.