Full-length mocks
A whole paper, in the real order, under the real clocks, with the real rule about not going back. The closest thing to the exam day you can get at home.
Practice tests are assembled for you from the question bank. A full-length mock is the opposite: a fixed paper that every learner sits identically, with its sections in a fixed order and each section running on its own clock. It exists so that the number at the end means something you can compare week to week.
How a mock is built
A sectional paper is really several papers stapled together. Each section has its own name, its own question list, its own duration and its own instructions — and they run in sequence.
The GRE track's mocks, for example, follow the shorter GRE exactly: one Analytical Writing task in 30 minutes, then Verbal with 12 questions in 18 minutes, Quantitative with 12 in 21, Verbal with 15 in 23, and Quantitative with 15 in 26. That is 54 scored questions and a written task, in that order, every time.
The CAT track's mocks are three 40-minute sections. Different exam, same machinery — the blueprint comes from the paper, not from the app.
The section clock
Only one section is ever open. The clock for it lives on the server, not in your browser, which has two consequences worth understanding before you start:
- A refresh costs you nothing. Reloading the page, losing your connection, or opening the test in a second tab all recover the same clock with the same time remaining.
- The paper does not wait for you. If you close the tab during Verbal and come back an hour later, you will find Verbal expired and the Quantitative section running with its own clock already part-spent. Exactly as the real test would.
The clock is shown at the top of the screen and starts pressing visually as the section runs down, so you can read it with a glance rather than a pause.
Give a full-length mock the same uninterrupted block you would give the real paper. There is no pause, and there is no way to reopen a section once its clock has run out.
Moving around, and not
Inside the open section you can move wherever you like: forward, back, skip, return, change an answer you already gave. Between sections you cannot move at all — not forward to look ahead, and not back to finish the one that just closed.
That rule is enforced on the server rather than just hidden in the interface, so an answer for a closed section is refused however it is submitted. You will see the section tabs for the whole paper across the top, with the one you are in marked and the rest shown as pending, completed or expired.
The question palette
Down the side of the exam screen is a numbered grid of every question in the open section. Each number carries its state, so the palette is the one place that answers "where am I, and what have I left?" without clicking through the paper.
You committed something. Shown filled.
Seen or unseen, but nothing recorded. Shown plain.
Flagged to come back to. Independent of whether it is answered, so you can commit a guess and still flag it for another look.
Where you are now, outlined.
Click any number to jump straight there. On a narrow screen the palette collapses into a sheet you pull up, so it costs no reading width on a phone.
Passages, data sets and shared stimuli
Several questions often hang off one passage, table, caselet or figure. When they do, the stimulus is shown beside the question in its own scrolling panel rather than repeated above each question — so moving between the questions in a set does not move the passage, and you keep your place in it.
Finishing a section
Work through the section with Save & next. On the last question of the section that button asks you to confirm instead, because submitting is the thing you cannot undo: the section closes, the next one starts, and its clock begins.
You do not have to use the whole time. Submitting early simply starts the next section early — the time you did not spend is not banked.
When the last section is submitted the whole attempt is scored and the mock scorecard opens. See Your results for how to read it.
Tools you still have during a mock
Nothing that would help you answer, and everything that helps you keep notes for later:
- Mark a question to come back to inside the section.
- Capture a question as a treasure gem with a note, which you will find waiting in your vault afterwards.
- Bookmark a question to pull up again after the attempt.
There are no hints and no explanations during a mock, in any track. Those come afterwards, in Deep analysis.