Using the course
How to use the portal
Nine steps, in the order that works. If you read only one of them, read the first — setting your exam date is what turns the course into a daily target instead of a pile of material.
Watch it instead
One minute, showing the whole thing
The real portal, with subtitles: setting an exam date, answering a question and reading why, the weak-areas report, marking a topic done, flagging, building a paper, and the two run-up sections. No sound needed.
Step by step
What to do, in order
- 1
Send us your booking confirmation
As soon as you have booked your sitting, message the admin team on WhatsApp with the confirmation. We set the exam date on your account — it is not yours to set, and it cannot be changed from inside the portal.
Three things switch on with that date. The hub works out how many questions a day you need to finish the bank in time and tells you whether you are keeping up, and the Two-Week Final Revision and 72 Hours Before the Exam sections open for your sitting. Until then the portal is a very good pile of questions; with the date it is a plan. Rest days a week stay your own choice, and the daily number adjusts around them.
- 2
Start with the questions, not the guide
Open the question bank and begin. Take a subject you feel weak on, or use the search box, or just start at the top — the order matters far less than starting.
Answering is what makes the portal useful: the weak-areas report is built from questions you have actually answered, so until you have answered a few hundred it has nothing to tell you. Read the explanation on every question, including the ones you got right — the explanation says why each wrong option is wrong, and that is where the marks are.
- 3
Let the report choose what you do next
Once you have a few hundred answers behind you, open Where I am weak. It lists your subjects worst first, and your topics worst first, with a practise button on every row.
This is the part that replaces a tutor. You do not have to guess what to revise: press the button on the worst row and it opens exactly those questions. Do that instead of re-reading whatever is nearest, which is what most people do in the last fortnight.
- 4
Flag anything you want to come back to
Anything you are unsure of, flag it. Anything you got wrong is collected for you automatically under Incorrect answers.
These two lists are what you work through in the last two weeks, and they are far more valuable then than any fresh questions. Flag generously — it costs nothing and a flagged question you never return to has done no harm.
- 5
Mark topics done as you finish them
In the revision guide, each topic has a mark as done control. Press it when you have genuinely finished with a topic, not when you have merely read it.
It is how you can see what is left, and it is what the counters on the hub are counting. Bookmark a topic instead if you want to come back to it — done and bookmarked are different things on purpose.
- 6
Go from a topic straight into the questions that test it
At the bottom of almost every topic there is a button that opens the questions on that exact topic, in order.
Read the topic, then immediately answer the questions on it. That loop — read, answer, read the explanation — is worth more than an hour of reading on its own, and it is the reason to have both halves of the course.
- 7
Build your own papers
Start mock paper lets you choose: Paper A, Paper B or both mixed; 200, 150 or 100 questions; and whether you see the answers as you go or at the end.
Sit at least one full timed 200 before the exam, under proper conditions — the difficulty of the real paper is as much about the clock as the content. Tutor mode, which shows the answer after each question, is for practice rather than rehearsal. Every paper you sit is kept in My results.
- 8
Write your own notes
You can write a note against any question and any topic, and find them all again in one place.
The things you keep getting wrong are usually worth a sentence in your own words. A note you wrote is remembered far better than a paragraph you read.
- 9
In the last fortnight, switch to the run-up sections
Fourteen days out, the Two-Week Final Revision opens on the hub: twelve blocks, in the order the subjects are best revised. Three days out, 72 Hours Before the Exam opens.
By then you should not be learning anything new. The two-week plan is what carries the marks and nothing else, one block a day. The 72-hour section is almost entirely charts, colour codes and pictures — the things that are either recalled instantly or lost. Tick each item off as you go and the hub keeps your place.
Worth knowing
A few things that catch people out
One account signs in on one device at a time
Move between your phone and your laptop as much as you like — signing in on the second one signs you out of the first, and your progress follows you either way. What it will not do is work as two people at once, because the report is built from your answers and two people answering into one account produce a picture of nobody.
Your progress syncs, so start anywhere
Answers, notes, flags, topics marked done and your exam date all live on your account rather than on one device. Ten minutes between patients on a phone is ten minutes of revision, not ten minutes of finding your place.
The free three hours unlock everything
The three-hour trial is the whole course — every question, the mocks, the full guide and both run-up sections. The clock starts when you click the link in the email, not when you ask for it, so ask for it when you have a clear run at it. Anything you answer during it is kept, so if you join afterwards you carry on rather than start again.
Nothing here tells you what will come up
Nobody honestly can. What the portal does is show you, from your own answers, which subjects and topics are costing you marks — and then give you the material and the questions to fix them.
If something is unclear, say so
Write in and tell us. If an explanation does not settle a question, that is worth knowing and we would rather correct it than leave it. WhatsApp or the contact form both reach a person.
Try it before you pay
Three hours of the whole course, free — or a 100-question mock exam with no sign-up at all.