United States
Hong KongWhen to start mocks, and how many to sit
One cold mock in week four for diagnosis, then roughly weekly from the halfway point. Four to six in total, with at least two sat as full six-hour papers in a single day.
Most candidates start mocks too late, treat them as a final check rather than a study tool, and take fewer than they should.
The early cold mock
Week four of a sixteen-week plan, before you feel ready. That is the point.
It will produce a poor score and a domain breakdown, and the breakdown is what you need. Allocating 250 remaining hours from an actual measurement beats allocating them from a feeling about which domains you know.
Do not review the content of that mock in detail. Read the breakdown, reallocate, and move on - the questions are more useful later.
The main sequence
| Week | Mock | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Mock 1, cold | Diagnosis and hour allocation |
| 9 | Mock 2 | Progress check, first full six-hour sitting |
| 11 | Mock 3 | Repair check |
| 13 | Mock 4 | Full six-hour sitting, stamina |
| 15 | Mock 5 | Readiness |
| 15 or 16 | Mock 6, optional | Confidence, if the schedule allows |
Not two three-hour halves on separate evenings. The specific thing being tested is whether accuracy holds in the second session after three hours of dense reading, and that only happens in one sitting.
The review is the study
Budget at least as long as the sitting. A six-hour mock with a forty-minute review is a measurement, not a study session.
Sort every miss into knowledge, misreading and pacing. Only the first goes into the study plan; the second is a reading-technique fix and the third is a pacing fix, and treating all three as knowledge gaps is why candidates plateau.
Fresh questions matter
A mock built from questions you have seen before measures memory of those questions. Keep at least two banks unseen for the final mocks.
A score that drops on a fresh bank is information, not a setback - it usually means the earlier score was measuring familiarity.
The pattern to watch
Not the total. The domain spread, whether misreading misses are falling, and whether the second session score is closing on the first.
Those three trends tell you more about readiness than any single number, and they are the reason to start early enough to have a trend at all.
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Common questions
When should you take your first CFP mock?
Around week four of a sixteen-week plan, cold, before you feel ready. The domain breakdown tells you where the remaining 250 hours should go.
How many mocks should you take?
Four to six, roughly weekly from the halfway point, with at least two sat as full six-hour papers in a single day.
Why must two be sat in one day?
Because the specific thing being tested is whether accuracy holds in the second session after three hours of dense reading, and that cannot be tested across separate evenings.
How long should the review take?
At least as long as the sitting. A six-hour mock with a forty-minute review is a measurement rather than a study session.
What should you watch across mocks?
Not the total - the domain spread, whether misreading misses are falling, and whether the second session score is closing on the first.