Planning on studying math for the college entrance exam, I need a little help in organizing how I should study

[Zephyr1779]

Hi, everyone!

I'm preparing myself for the next year's college entrance exam, and I hope that 10-11 months of intensive study regime will be enough time for me to pass it. I would like your opinion on it to see if such a thing is possible and if there is anything that needs to be changed about my study program.

The entrance exam which is on July, 1st is only 10 math-based questions from a random selection of topics listed here: https://pastebin.com/8yKZ26XY

Now, here's the thing. All those topics that were listed in the above PasteBin link are the topics that are officially recommended on the college's site that students need to study for the exam, and what I'm curious about that is: Is 10-11 months enough time to study all these topics to be able to pass at least the majority of the questions correctly?

I have to admit that unfortunately, the last time I studied math was at high school, which was almost 7 years ago now, and seeing how I didn't use anything else other than basic arithmetic in my day-to-day life, I've forgotten all of the topics I studied back in high-school 

To make matters worse, my studying back in the day consisted of nothing but rote learning and memorizing just enough to get a passing grade, sometimes I managed to get a perfect score, but those moments were rare.

As far as learning goes, I never had a problem with it. I understood what I was studying fairly quickly, and I never found math so "troubling" as other students did, the only problem is as I mentioned before, I only tended to memorize things and rote learn what I was supposed to learn, which in turn lead me to this situation where I forgot most of the things I've learned before. So now, with such bad knowledge of math, is this time that I allocated for studying enough to encompass about 80% of those topics? I'm not looking to ace the entrance exam (although that would be ideal), but the more points I can get, the better.

Like I said before, I do plan on having an intensive study regime to be able to achieve this.

And, here's what my study plan looks like:

• I plan to start studying as soon as possible, hopefully by August (things in life just keep getting in the way right now). When I start, I'm going to go and repeat everything from 5th - 8th grade (this is mostly because I believe that if my fundamentals are bad, so I want to remind myself of what I've learned throughout those years and fill in any gaps that I might have, so as to not make the 9-12 material difficult)

 

My self-study resources will comprise mostly of:

• KhanAcademy
• PatrickJMT
• Professor Leonard
• MIT OpenCourseWare
• Worksheets found on the internet for homework

Additionally, if you have any recommendations for what websites or resources (books, videos, etc.) I should use them aside from these ones, feel free to recommend them. I could use anything that's good right now.
 

• In the beginning, my study will be light, consisting of only 3-4 hours a day, 5 days per week (1 - 2 hours more, if it's something hard), but as I'm nearing the entrance exam, I'll go with the more and more intensive regime, like 4-5 hours a day, then 6-7h a day, 6x a week, etc.

More than 8 hours is something I don't think I'll be able to accomplish, just to avoid burning myself out.

• Starting from September or October, I'll also include a private tutor who prepares students for these entrance exams, and I plan to go on those study sessions once a week to let him see how much I've progressed, and if there's anything that I don't know or am stuck on, to let him explain it to me, etc.

And that's pretty much it regarding my study plan. I'd like to hear your opinion on this and if there's anything you think I should change.

Also, out of all those topics listed above, the students I've contacted who have done those tests from previous years have told me that out of all those topics, the ones that appear the most frequently on tests are the following: (2, 6, 12, 16, 19, 20, 23, 24)

The tests in these previous 6-7 years are almost all the same, except with different numbers and wordings.


Another thing that I'd like to ask is, should I just ignore the 5-8 material, and focus on the high school stuff immediately? The reason why I wanted to go through the 5-8 was to refresh my memory of the basics and fill in the holes where I'm lacking. Is it better to do this, or is it better to ignore it and go immediately for the high-school stuff?

Also, in your opinion which of these topics would you focus more on, and which ones would you skip (if any)?


One last thing that I should mention is that the test itself is not scored based on a "Correct/Incorrect" answer, but rather on effort. Each question can get you 6 points, and there are 10 questions in total. If you try to answer a question but get it wrong, you can still get graded from 1 to 5 points, 6 if you answer correctly, 0 if you don't write anything down, or write down something irrelevant.



And that's all I have to say!

I'd like to hear your opinion on this whole situation and any suggestions you guys can offer me.

Thanks in forward, and apologies for such a long post!

[StringJunky]

Just pasting here for you:

- Logic and Sets (Logical operations, Functions, Sets, etc.)
- Numbers (Integers, Natural numbers, Rational numbers, Irrationals, Reals, Complex, etc.) !
- Proportionality
- Rational Algebraic Expressions
- Polynomials
- Vieta's formulas
- Linear equations
- Linear functions
- System of Linear Equations
- Factorization
- Exponentiation
- Exponential function
- Root (Square Roots, Cube Roots, etc.)
- Quadratic functions, Quadratic equations
- Algebraic equations, Irrational equations
- Logarithms, including Logarithmic functions, Exponential functions, Logarithmic equations, Exponential equations
- Trigonometry (Functions, Identities, Equations, Applied trigonometry)
- Mathematical inductions and sequences
- Arithmetic and Geometric progression
- Combinatorics
- Probability
- Binomial theorem and Binomial coefficient
- Planimetrics (Triangle, Circle, Quadrilateral)
- Stereometry / Solid geometry (Prism, Pyramid, Truncated Pyramid, Cylinder, Cone, Truncated cone, Sphere and its parts)
- Vectors