How to Practise Past Questions Properly
Ask a struggling student what they are doing about it and you will hear the same answer, every time: I am doing past questions. They usually are. Stacks of them. And it is usually not working, because doing a past question and practising one are two different activities that happen to look identical at a desk.
Written by Michael Siaw Larbi
Past questions are the best preparation material in professional exams, and most of the hours spent on them are wasted. Not because students are lazy. Because the version of past question work that feels good, notes within reach, no clock running, familiar topics, a satisfied nod at the model answer, is rehearsal, and rehearsal changes almost nothing. Real practice is a different activity with different conditions, and it comes with one catch: it feels worse. This guide draws the line clearly, gives you an honest audit of which one you have been doing, and leaves you with a protocol that turns the same stack of questions into an entirely different result.
The one sentence version
The value of a past question is not in doing it. It is in the conditions you do it under and the honesty of the marking afterwards. If your practice feels good, it is probably rehearsal.
The Doing Illusion
Here is how past question work actually happens at most desks. The student opens a question on a topic they broadly like. The notes stay on the table, just in case. There is no clock, or there is a clock that nobody obeys. They work through the answer at a comfortable pace, checking a formula here, a format there. Then they turn to the suggested solution, read it through, and feel that warm little yes, I knew that. Question done. Tick.
Every part of that session felt like work, and almost none of it was practice. The notes answered the recall question the exam will ask. The missing clock removed the pressure the exam will apply. The comfortable topic hid from the oldest rule of the hall: on the day, the paper chooses the questions, not you. And the marking, if reading and nodding can be called marking, measured nothing. What actually got practised in that session was the experience of doing a question with every difficulty removed, which is an experience the exam does not offer.
The cruel part is the accounting. That session still counts in the student's head. Another question done, another tick in the book, more proof of hard work. So when the result comes back low, the conclusion is that past questions do not work, or worse, that they themselves do not work. Neither is true. The questions were fine. The conditions were fiction.
If your practice feels good, it is probably rehearsal. Real practice feels worse and works better.
Picture the same question on two desks tonight. One student does it in comfort and closes the book feeling warm. The other sits it cold, in time, scores it 11 out of 20, and writes down why the nine died. Tonight, the first student feels better. In three weeks, the second one is better, because real practice leaves something behind: a score, a list of what died, a next session that knows its job. Comfort leaves nothing behind but the mood.
The distinction is worth stating cleanly, because everything else in this guide follows from it. Rehearsal is repeating what you can already do, in comfort. Practice is producing what the exam will demand, under the exam's own conditions, and then measuring the result honestly. The materials are identical. The activities are not even related.
The “Yes, I Knew That” Trap
Of all the ways rehearsal dresses up as practice, one deserves its own section, because it is the most common and the most convincing: the way you check your answer.
You finish a question, open the suggested solution, and read it. As you read, you recognise things. That point, I had that. That working, I did something like that. That conclusion, obviously, I was about to write that. By the bottom of the page you have awarded yourself a comfortable pass, and not one mark of it was real. What you measured was recognition, whether the model answer looked familiar. What the exam pays for is production, whether you actually put it on the page, unprompted, in time. The guide on why smart students fail covers this gap in full, and the marking desk is exactly where it bites: reading and nodding feels like marking, and it is not. It is your memory agreeing with itself.
Try it on yourself. You have just finished writing an answer and the suggested solution is sitting there. What do you actually do next?
Honestly, now
The answer is written. The solution is in front of you.
A written score changes the entire activity behind it. The moment you know a number is coming, the answer gets written for the number, under conditions that make the number mean something. This is also why the score must be written down: a score you did not record is a score you will quietly improve in memory by next week.
Here is what the top of a marked attempt should look like, one line: 14/20. Lost 6: no conclusion (2), working not labelled (2), ran out of time (2). That line is worth more than the whole answer underneath it, because the answer is about this question, and the line is about your next one.
Audit Your Practice
Eight statements about how past question work happens at your desk. Tap every one that is honestly true of you, not the you that is planning to improve, the you of the last month. Each one will declare itself as practice or rehearsal, and the verdict underneath will tell you what your hours have actually been buying.
The audit
How do you actually work a past question?
Tap every line that is true of you.
Do not be discouraged by a rehearsal-heavy result. It is the normal result, because rehearsal is what practice drifts into whenever nobody is watching, and nobody is watching. The point of the audit is that every rehearsal habit on that list has a practice twin, and switching costs nothing but comfort.
The Real Practice Protocol
Here is the whole method, in the order it runs. One question worked through this protocol is worth more than five worked loosely, because the marks are not made in the attempt. They are made in the honest scoring afterwards and in what you do about what it shows.
The method
The Real Practice Protocol
- Choose by fear, not by comfort. The question you least want to open is the one paying the most. Your favourite topics are already earning; your feared ones are where the recoverable marks live.
- Sit it, do not do it. Notes closed and out of reach. The exam’s own time for the marks on offer. No pausing, no peeking, no mercy. You are not studying the question, you are sitting it.
- Write the full answer by hand. Not a plan, not bullet headings, the actual answer, because the exam is a production task and production is the skill being trained. Plans are for coverage on busy days, not for practice.
- Mark it against the scheme, in numbers. Point by point against the marking scheme or suggested solution. Award what a stranger could award from the page alone, nothing you merely meant. Write the score at the top and keep it.
- Name every lost mark, then fix the biggest leak first. Each lost mark gets a reason: never attempted, never finished, wrong requirement, invisible method, easy mark skipped, or genuinely did not know. The guide on going from 45 to 55 gives this review a name, the Leak Audit, and your next practice session starts wherever it points.
What I Tell My Students
Students bring me their preparation the same way: a stack of completed past questions, sometimes a whole folder of them, held up as evidence. I ask one thing. Show me the scores. And there is almost never a score in sight, because the questions were done, not sat, and checked by nodding, not marked. A stack of unscored questions is not preparation. It is reading with extra steps. The day a student starts writing a number on every attempt is the day the stack starts turning into marks.
Michael Siaw Larbi
Two refinements once the protocol is running. First, choose against your comfort. A good practice week leans deliberately toward the papers and topics you avoid, because that is where the audit will keep sending you anyway. Second, respect the second sitting of a question: a question you sat three weeks ago, re-sat cold, tells you whether the fix held. That is the only good reason to repeat a question. Repeating one because it went well last time is the purest rehearsal there is.
Where This Leaves You
Nothing in this guide asks you to work more hours. That is worth noticing, because the student doing rehearsal is often working enormous hours already, and the injustice of their result is real. The change being asked for is smaller and harder: the same questions, the same desk, with the comfort removed and a number written at the top of every attempt. The hours stop being evidence of effort and start being practice. And if your evenings are short, this is the best news in this series: real practice is how three questions do the work of ten.
And there is a quiet compounding effect waiting on the other side. Every scored attempt teaches you something specific about your next one. Every named leak points the next session. Within a few weeks, your practice stops being a pile and becomes a record, and a record is something you can actually improve. The stack was never the asset. The scores are.
Do This Today
Pick the topic you have been avoiding longest. One question, notes closed, the exam’s own time, full written answer. Then mark it against the scheme in numbers, write the score at the top, and name every lost mark’s reason. One question, done exactly like that, will teach you more than the last ten you did comfortably. If you need the material, every recent paper is waiting in the past questions library on the MSLApp, alongside the solutions to mark against.
This guide runs on two ideas the series has already built. The gap between recognising an answer and producing one is covered in the guide on why smart students fail, and the discipline of naming where marks died comes from the guide on going from 45 to 55. Real practice is simply those two ideas, applied to a stack of past questions, every time you sit one.
Questions Students Ask
Is doing past questions enough to pass a professional exam?
Past questions are the best preparation material available, but the doing is not what earns the marks. The value depends on the conditions you sit them under and the honesty of the marking afterwards. A question done with notes open, no clock and a nod at the model answer trains very little, while the same question sat closed book, in time, marked against the scheme in numbers, is the closest thing to the exam that exists outside the hall.
Should I do past questions open book or closed book?
Closed book, once you are practising rather than learning. Open notes answer the recall question the exam will ask you to answer alone, so an open book session measures your notes, not you. There is a legitimate early stage where you study a question with materials to learn the method, but call that study, not practice, and make sure a closed book, timed attempt at a similar question follows it.
How should I mark my own practice answers?
Against the marking scheme or suggested solution, point by point, in numbers, awarding only what a stranger could award from the page alone. Reading the model answer and recognising your intentions in it is not marking, it is recognition, and it makes you feel more ready than you are. Write the final score at the top of the attempt and keep it, because an unrecorded score gets quietly improved by memory within a week.
Should I write full answers or just plan them?
Write full answers for real practice, because the exam is a production task and production under time is precisely the skill being trained. Answer plans have a legitimate place: they let you cover more questions on a busy day and they are useful for checking approach. But a preparation made only of plans arrives at the exam never having produced a complete answer under pressure, which is the one thing the paper demands.
Which questions should I practise, my strong topics or my weak ones?
Weight your practice toward the topics and papers you avoid, because that is where the recoverable marks are. Practising favourite topics feels productive and mostly polishes marks you were already going to earn. The honest test of a practice week is how much of it you spent inside questions you did not want to open. Strong topics still deserve some time, but they should not be most of your practice.
Is it worth redoing a past question I have already done?
Only for one reason: to test whether a fix held. A question you sat weeks ago, re-sat cold under the same conditions, tells you whether the marks you lost last time have actually been recovered. Redoing a question because it went well last time is rehearsal, not practice, and it mostly buys the feeling of competence rather than new marks.
How many past questions should I do before the exam?
Fewer than you think, done properly, beats more done loosely. One question sat under exam conditions, marked in numbers and reviewed properly teaches more than several done comfortably, because the learning happens in the scoring and the naming of lost marks, not in the attempt. Volume matters eventually, but volume of real practice, and the fastest way to raise it is to make every attempt count rather than to count attempts.
How do I create exam conditions at home?
Close the notes and put them out of reach, put the phone in another room, set the exam’s own time for the marks on offer, and sit the whole question in one unbroken block, writing by hand. No pausing the timer, no quick checks, no music if the hall will not have music. The test of home conditions is simple: if the hall would not allow it, your desk does not allow it either.
Where can I find past questions and solutions to practise with?
The examining bodies publish past papers and suggested solutions, and your tuition provider should organise them for you. MSL Business School students have every recent paper, with solutions to mark against, in the past questions library on the MSLApp, which means the material for a real practice session is never the missing piece. The missing piece is almost always the conditions.
This is the eighth guide in the Excellence Blueprint, MSL Business School's study and exam technique series. A new guide publishes every week, written by Michael Siaw Larbi.
