"I've Taken Five Practice Exams and My Score Hasn't Moved"
This shows up constantly in study communities: "This is my fifth practice exam — 65, 63, 67... it just stays around there. I don't feel like I'm improving." In most of these cases, the problem isn't how many exams you've taken — it's how you're reviewing what you got wrong. Endlessly taking new practice exams is essentially giving yourself another chance to repeat the exact same mistake.
Step 1 — Sort Every Wrong Answer Into One of Three Categories
The most common mistake when writing a wrong-answer note is just copying down the correct answer. That's not a wrong-answer note — it's transcription. Every wrong answer needs to be sorted into one of three reasons for missing it:
| Type | Example (S3 vs. EBS question) | Fix | |---|---|---| | Didn't know the concept | Didn't understand the difference between S3 and EBS at all | Go back to concept study | | Fell for a trap | Knew both were storage, but missed that under "multiple instances accessing simultaneously," S3 (or EFS) is correct, not EBS | Build a separate comparison table for look-alike services | | Misread the question | Missed the "most cost-effective" qualifier and picked based on performance instead | Get in the habit of underlining conditions in the question |
These three types call for completely different fixes. A gap in concepts is solved by studying again — but traps and misreading keep repeating no matter how many times you review the concept. These two categories are exactly where a wrong-answer note actually earns its keep. In practice, on an "S3 vs. EBS vs. EFS" question, most people know all three are storage services — but as soon as the condition says "multiple EC2 instances need to access the same files simultaneously," the correct answer is EFS, and people keep picking the more familiar EBS by mistake anyway.
Step 2 — Group by Domain, Not by Exam Order
If you just pile up wrong answers in the order you took each exam, you won't see the pattern. Instead, group them by domain — networking, security/IAM, storage, compute, and so on — and a pattern jumps out: you're missing questions repeatedly in one specific domain. Even if your overall score is 65%, if the storage domain is sitting around 40%, it's far more efficient to funnel your remaining study time straight into that domain. Take the 65/63/67 example above — sort those wrong answers by domain, and it often turns out all three exams were missing questions in the same two domains, storage and networking, over and over.
Step 3 — Retest After a Delay
If you re-answer a question right after checking the correct answer, it's easy to feel like you "got it" — but that's just your short-term memory recalling what you just saw, not real understanding. Retest the same question after a gap of at least two or three days, ideally about a week, to check whether you actually understood it. If you get it wrong again, go back to Step 1 and re-sort it.
Step 4 — Take the Exam Like It's Real, Review Like There's No Rush
When you're taking a practice exam, treat it like the real thing — keep to the time limit, don't look anything up mid-exam. During review, it's the opposite: don't rush, and even for questions you got right, flag any where you weren't confident and just guessed correctly — add those to your wrong-answer note too. Getting the right answer doesn't mean you actually understand the concept behind it.
The Bottom Line
If your practice score keeps circling the same number — 65, 63, 67 — check your wrong-answer note before taking on more exams. If you keep falling for the same trap, no amount of new questions will fix that — you'll just keep missing it in the same place.