Previous year papers

The most common mistake with previous year papers is chronological order — starting at the oldest and working forward, as though the point were completeness. It feels systematic and it teaches very little, because it spreads effort evenly across topics you already know and topics you do not.

Sit a mock first, read the report, and then work the questions in the areas it names. A paper is a diagnostic instrument before it is a practice one, and using it in that order turns twenty hours of solving into a targeted week.

When you do attempt a full paper, attempt it whole and timed. Three hours, one sitting, no pauses to check an answer. Papers solved in fragments over an evening measure knowledge; papers solved under the clock measure the thing the exam actually measures, which is knowledge under pressure with a countdown visible.

Then read our solutions even for the questions you got right. Roughly a fifth of correct answers in a timed paper are correct for the wrong reason — a guess that landed, a shortcut that happens to work for those numbers — and the only way to find those is to compare your method against a worked one.