A full mock is a poor way to fix a weakness. Most of the paper is material you can already handle, so you spend an hour or two for a few useful minutes on the part that needs work.
The weak-area drill is a shortcut for that. It looks at how you have actually been answering and puts together a session aimed only at where you are losing marks.
Key takeaways
- The drill is 30 questions, one minute each, with no negative marking, and it is not ranked.
- It looks at your last five submitted attempts on one post and finds your three weakest areas.
- Within those areas it prefers questions you missed, then ones you have not seen.
- It is Premium, and you need to have answered enough questions first.
- It works the same for CSS MPT and for each FPSC post.
What it looks at
The drill works one post at a time. It takes your five most recent submitted attempts on that post and measures your accuracy in each area of the syllabus.
An area only counts once you have answered at least 10 of its questions across those attempts. Fewer than that is mostly noise, and the drill would rather say nothing than guess. From the areas that qualify, it takes the weakest three by accuracy. If only two qualify it uses two, and if only one qualifies it uses that one.
Until at least one area has enough answers behind it, the drill is not available. In practice that usually means a couple of full mocks or a few Practice Sets on the post first.
What it puts in the session
Thirty questions, spread across those areas with the weakest getting the most: 15, 9 and 6 for three areas, 18 and 12 for two, or all 30 for one.
Inside each area it picks in a set order of preference:
- Questions you got wrong.
- Questions you have not seen in those attempts.
- Questions you did not get right in your last two attempts.
- Anything else, if it still needs more.
So you meet your mistakes again first, then new material in the same weak ground, and the questions you have been getting right recently are held back. The order is shuffled, so where a question sits tells you nothing.
What you will not see
The drill never tells you which areas it picked. It is an ordinary attempt, and your results show figures by section, as they do for any mock. If you want to know where you are weak, the section breakdown on your mock results does that, and on Premium the sub-section breakdown goes further.
How to use it
- Run it after a couple of attempts, not instead of them. It is built from your results, so it needs results.
- Do it more than once. Your weak areas change as you improve. Run it again after your next full mock and it will aim somewhere new.
- Review it like a mock. The questions are chosen because you find them hard. If you rate them with Sure, Unsure and Guess, you will learn which of your improvements are real.
- Let revision handle the leftovers. What you miss in a drill enters your revision queue like any other miss.
On an FPSC post, a rhythm of full mock, drill, full mock gives you a clear before and after. Studying Smart for an FPSC Post lays out a week that uses it.
Where to find it
Weak-area drill is under Study tools. It is on Premium, which covers both CSS MPT and FPSC. See pricing for the plans. Free accounts still get the section-level breakdown for every attempt.
Frequently asked questions
Thirty. They are timed at one minute each, with no negative marking.
Not enough answers yet. An area needs at least 10 answered questions across your last five attempts on the post before the drill can use it. Take a couple more mocks or Practice Sets and check again.
No. It is practice built for you, and it is not ranked.
No. It chooses from your results. If you want to pick the sections yourself, Custom Mock (Premium) lets you build a paper from the sections you choose.