Exam readiness - Is your study plan on track?
Pauk connects your consolidated learning progress with your exam date and shows whether your progress matches the preparation time you have left.
View learning progress and time together
As an exam approaches, knowing how many cards you have already studied is not enough. What also matters is whether your current learning progress matches the time remaining until the exam.
Exam readiness therefore considers both how far you have progressed through the material and how much of your available preparation time has already passed. These two values create a target-versus-actual comparison.
If your actual progress is above today's target, you are ahead of schedule. If it is below, Pauk shows how far behind you are.
Exam readiness is not a prediction of your exam grade or likelihood of passing. It shows your learning progress within Pauk's study system in relation to the time available.
How to set up exam readiness
Pauk needs three things for complete planning:
- your flashcard deck,
- the start of your exam preparation,
- your exam date.
Once you have set the preparation start and exam date, Pauk compares your learning progress with the target for that point in time.
Without a complete schedule, you can still see your current learning progress in a compact indicator. Adding an exam date turns it into the full plan with elapsed time, today's target, and status.
Not every studied card counts equally
Exam readiness is not based simply on how many cards you have already worked through. Pauk considers how well the content of each card has been consolidated.
Each card's current learning box contributes to the calculation:
| Learning box | Contribution to exam readiness |
|---|---|
| Box 0 | 0 % |
| Box 1 | 0 % |
| Box 2 | 25 % |
| Box 3 | 50 % |
| Box 4 | 75 % |
| Box 5 | 100 % |
A card in box 5 is therefore considered fully consolidated within Pauk's learning system. A card in box 3 has completed half of the required learning path.
Box 1 deliberately does not count toward exam readiness yet. A single correct answer does not mean that you will retain the content over time.
The amount of content on a card also counts
A card can contain one fact or several. Pauk accounts for this difference in the calculation.
For example, a card with four facts receives four times the weight of a card with only one fact. This prevents a content-heavy card from being weighted the same as a very simple one.
As a result, exam readiness reflects the actual amount of knowledge you need to learn more closely, rather than just the number of flashcards in your deck.
Today's target on the way to your exam
Pauk creates a linear timeline between the start of your exam preparation and the exam date.
The target is 0% at the beginning. Halfway through the preparation period, it is approximately 50%. On the exam date, it reaches 100%.
If half of your preparation period has passed, today's target progress is 50%. If your weighted learning progress is already 62% at that point, you are 12 percentage points ahead of schedule.
Pauk currently uses a deliberately even target curve. Weekends, individual study days, or different amounts of daily study time do not change this time-based target.
Ahead, on track, or critical?
Pauk compares your actual learning progress with today's target. The difference determines your current status.
This difference is measured in percentage points: if your target is 40% and your learning progress is 50%, for example, you are 10 percentage points ahead.
Understand the graphic at a glance
Exam readiness brings your learning progress and schedule together in a single graphic:
- The outer arc shows how much of your preparation time has passed.
- The inner arc shows your learning progress, weighted by learning status and number of facts.
- The marker shows the overall progress you should have reached by today according to the timeline.
You also see the current day of your preparation, today's target, your deviation from the plan, and the resulting status.
The indicator changes as you learn
Exam readiness is always based on the current state of your flashcard deck.
As you master cards more confidently and they move to higher boxes, exam readiness increases. If cards are moved back, it can decrease again. New cards increase the total amount of material to learn, and cards with many facts have a greater impact.
At the same time, the timeline advances every day. If you do not study for a few days, an existing lead can shrink: your learning progress initially stays the same while today's target continues to rise.
For automatic management of your study flow, you can use the Learning Assistant. Spaced repetition schedules reviews over longer periods, while Kick helps you build new learning material systematically.
Why exam readiness is useful
A simple progress indicator answers only one question: How much have I already learned?
For an exam, a second question is just as important: Is that enough for today?
Exam readiness brings these two perspectives together. Throughout your preparation, you can see whether your actual learning progress matches the time remaining, instead of discovering shortly before the exam that too much material is still left.
This turns your exam date into a concrete study plan and your learning progress into a metric you can evaluate in the right time context.