[Mocks] Collection of mock exams

Hello hoomans,

Are y'all looking for more IB practice papers after you've exhausted a large collection of past papers you could get your hands on? Do you want to try papers that are (generally) above and beyond what you'd expect on the actual exam? 

I've uploaded all the goodies I've ever written for my own mock server (at http://discord.gg/SHBFEAf39Y) for the last two exam sessions. Note that Nov 2020 was the last sitting of the old syllabi but you'll find most of the questions very useful for the current courses.

Papers will eventually be added to the Google Drive after each mock session.

Just in case you're new to the website or you haven't had time to take the mocks, here are some reasons why you should try the papers out.

Challenging

If you talk to people who have tried my mock before, it isn't uncommon to see people reporting that they've lost a couple brain cells. 

I'm known to be a hard exam writer so this isn't news to me, but you'd find yourself stumped at a couple questions and that's alright. Others said it's a solid slap in the face for you to wake up and revise properly before the real thing. It's win-win, essentially.

Fair

After writing a couple sets of exams as well as doing a fair number of exams available online, I think I have a somewhat decent grip on the content coverage and the progression of the difficulty as we go further into the paper. These papers aren't perfect; the real thing takes a year and a half to write with a ton of people involved in different parts, while mine is simply me with my PC and the other marker to discuss the paper before realising to the public. I use comments from previous mocks to make sure that my papers are more similar to the real thing (for AA) or not-as-far-from-the-actual-thing (for AI), so you can expect a similar (but probably easier) set of questions on your plate on D-day.

Using the legacy mocks (or past papers, for that purpose)

For AAHL, the equivalence is definitely old HL maths with calculus option. No questions asked.

For AASL, the equivalence is old SL maths without vectors.

For AIHL, the equivalence is roughly SL maths with some elements of HL maths with calculus, discrete and stats options. It's all over the place.

For AISL, the equivalence is old mathematical studies without the logic stuff. 

The shortage of mock exam papers

There is a real shortage of mock exam papers online. Compared to your friends who are taking A-level or other qualifications, the amount of mock exams for IB students is quite limited and I'd like to fix that.

I make all of the papers I use for IB mock exams on the Discord server totally free to everyone. Feel free to share the papers to your friends, ideally this post so they know I have more interesting stuff waiting to be discovered. :P (Quite an obvious plug, I know, but my website, my rule.)

I've tried to make the MS more student-friendly, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. When we run mocks, we'll release the papers, you'll have 48 hours to submit them (ofc, allowing a 1h30m/2h timeslot to get the paper done in the exam conditions is ideal), we'll mark the papers and release the grades.

Before the mock

- Revise all the content. 

Even though you may notice some trends in the past papers you've done, anything can show up on the real exam and you must be prepared for everything if you want to get a 7.

- Print the exams out if possible. 

You should get used to how the exams look like physically by the time you sit the exams so there is no confusion.

- Read through the paper and think about how you'd tackle the questions.

Use the reading time wisely! Even though you are not allowed to have your pen with you during the reading time, you can think about the order of questions that you should tackle. You may have heard this from me before, but the difficulty of the AA exams spikes at the end of section A and drops to somewhere close to the lowest point at the beginning of section B. If you're stuck at the last question of section A, it's wise to move on and get the "easy" marks.

Link to the Google Drive with the mocks

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iCOJeHuvSDDtSHydW6tS2hAmtAfQbpVy

Credits

For all the mock papers before N21, many questions are taken from various non-IB sources that I didn't properly source because I was afraid of students googling the solutions to the question. Starting N21, I've included the source for questions that I didn't write myself becuase it's the proper thing to do and it gives students a lot more resources to have a go at.

What's next? (written on Sept 21st, 2021)

I haven't finalised the dates for the mocks, as I still need to write the AI papers and their MS. Next weekend (October 2nd) would be ideal. I'll keep you all updated in the mock server, the revision session channel and the math-aa and math-ai channels on IB Discord.

Happy preparation!

Androo