How to practice multiple-choice questions the right way

An MCQ is a test: it forces you to retrieve a piece of information and apply it. The testing effect, described notably by Roediger and Karpicke (2006), shows that testing yourself locks in knowledge better than rereading it, even when you get it wrong, provided you see the right answer afterward. See active recall.

MCQs also train a separate skill: quickly reading a tricky question, telling apart nearly identical options, managing your time. You can know your course and still lose points on these. In PASS and LAS (the French first-year health programs), in health and nursing entrance exams or in the French driving theory test, this practice is essential.

At least part of your practice should reproduce the exam:

• Time yourself. Work out the time per question in the real exam and stick to it. Without a timer, you reread each option three times, which won't be possible on the day.
• No open course, no break, no phone. A set done with the handout next to you measures your ability to look things up, not to know them.
• Answer everything as you would in the exam, applying the same marking scheme, including negative marks if there are any. Your strategy when in doubt should be the same in practice and on the day.
• Mix chapters in some sets. In the exam, questions come without labels.

Also keep shorter sets, by chapter and untimed, right after reviewing a lecture: they are for checking understanding. The two formats complement each other.

Many mistakes come from reading, not from knowledge. A few reflexes:

• Read the whole question before the options, and spot what is being asked: the correct option, or the false one?
• Read all the options, even when the first one seems right. In multiple-answer MCQs, several can be.
• Hunt for negations and double negations: "not", "except", "is not contraindicated". Underline them mentally.
• Beware of absolutes: "always", "never", "systematically", "only". In biology, medicine or law, they often make an option false, but not always: check the substance.
• Spot the changed word: "increases" instead of "decreases", an artery instead of a vein, "void" instead of "voidable". False options are often a sentence from the course with a single word changed.
• Don't reinterpret the question. Answer the question asked, not the one you would have liked to see.

Redoing a set until you score 20/20 mostly gives the illusion of progress: on the third pass, you remember the answers, not the course. The real work begins after the correction.

For each question you missed, identify the type of mistake:

Keep a log of the questions you missed. Come back to them a few days later, without looking at the correction: if you get them right, the mistake is fixed; if not, the point deserves a real review. Turning missing knowledge into cards brings it into your spaced repetition.

A mock exam reproduces a complete exam, at its real length. It tests your endurance and your time management over several hours, and measures your level across the whole syllabus rather than chapter by chapter.

Plan several during the semester, especially in the last weeks, and leave half a day after each mock exam for the correction. An uncorrected mock exam is almost useless. Put them in your study planner as real deadlines.

The best sources are the ones that look like your exams: your university's past papers, the MCQs your teachers give in tutorials, the ones produced by the peer tutoring program or the student association of your program. Writing MCQs yourself from the course is also an excellent exercise: looking for the trap forces you to understand what separates the true from the almost true.

Swapping sets between classmates multiplies the stock with no extra effort: each person writes the questions for one chapter and shares them with the group. See also studying medicine in PASS and LAS.

Mnemesia does not provide a question bank: sets are written by hand, from your course and your past papers, or received from a classmate as a file. You can also have a set prepared by Claude, ChatGPT or the AI of your choice: Mnemesia gives you the prompt to paste along with your handout, then imports the file that comes back, correction included. Check it: an AI makes mistakes too.

• Practice sets and timed mock exams, to work under real conditions.
• Detailed correction at the end of each attempt.
• Missed questions to retry, to redo only what gave you trouble.
• A history of your attempts, to follow your scores from one set to the next.
• Exams swapped as a single file: one person writes, the whole class practices.

Your mistakes can go into the "notes and mistakes" deck of the handout concerned, and become cards. Everything stays on your device, with no account: download Mnemesia.