How to do a mock exam to study, and how to read your score

A mock exam has three ingredients. It covers the whole syllabus, not a single chapter. It is done with no notes or help, otherwise it is just rereading in disguise. And it takes place in conditions close to the big day, with limited time and a sheet to hand in. That is what separates it from an evening quiz on today’s lesson.

Research explains why this helps. In the study by Roediger and Karpicke, between a test at 5 minutes and a test a week later, students who had reread forgot 52% of what they knew, against 14% for those who had quizzed themselves (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). And in the review by Dunlosky and colleagues, practice testing is one of the two techniques with high utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013). A mock exam is a way of quizzing yourself on a large scale.

First, choose the moment. A week before the exam leaves time to correct, and a lighter second pass can follow in the days after. Second, put away your notes and phone, and set a timer close to the real duration. Third, answer from memory, even when you doubt, and mark what is uncertain instead of looking it up.

Fourth, correct straight away with your course, noting for each mistake whether it is a memory gap, a mix-up or a misread question. Fifth, put the missed ideas back into your reviews, in the order you miss them most. If your exam is a knowledge test, such as a driving theory test, Driving theory test and Citizenship test explain what to memorise. To keep to a calendar, see How to make a study schedule before an exam.

The type of question changes what the exam gives you. In a simulated classroom, Butler and Roediger gave a short answer test, a multiple choice test or a summary to reread, then a final test a month later. The short answer test improved final recall the most (Butler and Roediger, 2007). In Rowland’s meta-analysis, recall tests bring more than recognition tests, which ties the benefit to the effort of retrieving (Rowland, 2014).

In practice, try to write or say the answer before you see any choices, even if the real exam is multiple choice. If you recognise the right answer without being able to produce it, you are less solid than you think. To learn how to build this kind of question, read Active recall, why quizzing yourself beats rereading and How to make flashcards that actually work. The most important thing is still to mark honestly, a guessed right answer counts for what it is, luck.

A mock exam mixes the chapters, like the real exam. It is harder than studying one chapter at a time, and that is the point. Rohrer and Taylor compared two ways of practising maths problems, grouped types and mixed types. On the delayed test, the mixed version gave better results (Rohrer and Taylor, 2007).

Mixing forces you to recognise which type of question you are facing before you answer, a skill that an isolated chapter never asks for. If you get stuck, that is information, not failure. The page Does interleaving, or mixed practice, really help you study? explains this idea in more detail. If mixing feels too hard at first, do a short first mock exam on two or three chapters, then widen it to the whole syllabus.

A mock exam score tells you where you stand right now, not what you will get on the day. It describes a current state, not a future result. What matters is the detail. Which ideas came up, which collapsed under the clock, which were right by luck. An average score with ten days ahead of you is more useful than a good score on an exam that has already passed.

Make two lists. Real gaps, which you need to relearn, and careless slips, which you need to watch. Spend more time on the first. Then redo those questions a few days later, not the same evening, to find out whether it has really stuck. If the mock exam stresses you, remind yourself that it is better to get things wrong here, with nothing at stake, than on exam day.

In Lumi, the mock exam mixes 10 to 20 questions from your whole course, with no help at all. It gives you a score out of 20 and the detail for each card. The questions you miss move to the front of your reviews, so you see them again before the rest. It is put forward in the 3 days before the exam date you set, when it helps most.

Knowt says on its side that it has a Practice Test Room with unlimited problems, and tests generated from your notes, according to its home page read on 7 November 2026 (Knowt, 2026). Both approaches aim at the same technique. Choose by what you are after, tests on demand or a mock exam built into Lumi’s rhythm of forgetting and re-quizzing. The app is not on the App Store yet.