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A study plan for the weeks I actually have

Tell Claude the exam, the date and what you already know, and get a week by week plan that puts your weakest topics first and keeps the last days for practice tests, not new material.

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The prompt

I have an exam coming up and I need a study plan that fits my real life, not an ideal one.

The exam: [NAME, e.g. AWS Solutions Architect Associate, A-level chemistry, the driving theory test]
Exam date: [DATE]. Today is [DATE].
Hours I can honestly study per week: [NUMBER], usually [DAYS OR TIMES]
Topics on the syllabus: [LIST, or "look it up, it's a public exam"]
Where I am now: [e.g. comfortable with X and Y, never touched Z, scored 58% on a practice test]
Materials I have: [BOOKS, COURSES, PRACTICE TESTS]

Build the plan like this:
- Week by week, with a few lines per week on what to cover and what "done" looks like.
- Weak topics go early, while I still have time to get stuck and recover.
- Every week ends with a short retrieval session on earlier weeks, not just the new material.
- The last [N] days are practice tests and review only. No new topics.
- If the hours I gave you aren't enough for the syllabus, say so at the top and tell me what to skim, rather than squeezing everything in.

Finish with the three things most likely to go wrong with this plan and how I'd notice early.
  • study
  • exams
  • planning

What it generates

Example
study-plan.mdDownload .md

Straight answer first: 6 hours a week for 7 weeks is 42 hours. That's enough for this exam given you're already at 58% on a practice test, but only if the plan skims what you already pass. I've marked two areas to skim.

Week 1 (30 Sep to 6 Oct): networking, your weakest area

  • VPCs, subnets, route tables, security groups against NACLs, peering and transit gateway.
  • Done means: you can draw a two-tier VPC from memory and explain why each rule exists.
  • Sunday, 30 minutes: 20 flashcards from this week.

Week 2: storage

  • S3 storage classes and lifecycle rules, EBS volume types, EFS, and when each one is the wrong answer.
  • Done means: given a workload description, you pick the class and can say why the cheaper one would fail.
  • Sunday: flashcards from weeks 1 and 2.

Week 3: compute and scaling

  • EC2 purchase options, auto scaling policies, load balancer types. Skim Lambda basics, you passed those questions.
  • Sunday: retrieval on weeks 1 to 3, plus 20 practice questions on networking only.

Week 4: databases

  • RDS against Aurora against DynamoDB, read replicas against multi-AZ, backup and restore.
  • Sunday: retrieval, plus a timed 30-question mixed set.

Week 5: security and identity

  • IAM policies, roles against users, KMS, Organizations. Skim CloudTrail, you already pass it.
  • Sunday: retrieval, another timed set.

Week 6: architecture patterns and cost

  • The well-architected pillars as they appear in questions, cost questions, migration options.
  • Sunday: a full practice test under exam conditions.

Week 7 (last 5 days): practice only

  • One full practice test every other day. Review every wrong answer the same day. No new material.
  • The day before: nothing after lunch.

What's most likely to go wrong

  • You skip the Sunday retrieval because the new topic ran over. You'll notice when week 4's mixed set scores lower than week 3's.
  • Networking takes two weeks instead of one. If Sunday of week 1 ends and you can't draw the VPC, take one day from week 3's compute block, not from week 7.
  • Practice scores plateau around 70%. That usually means you're re-reading instead of testing yourself. Switch to questions only.

NoteThis is an example. Results change between runs and model versions. Claude Prompts is a fan project and is not affiliated with Anthropic.

Getting the most from this prompt

The honest number

Everything in the plan hangs on "hours I can honestly study per week". Put the number you managed last month, not the one you're hoping for. The prompt asks Claude to say up front when the hours don't cover the syllabus, and that warning only helps if the number underneath it is true. A plan built on twelve hours a week that you'll deliver six of is worse than no plan, because you'll be behind from week one and feel it.

Why the hard part comes first

The instinct is to warm up with the topics you like. The plan does the opposite, because a topic you're stuck on in week two still has five weeks to sort itself out, and the same topic in week six has none. It also means the retrieval sessions keep bringing the hard material back while it's still fresh, which is what turns "I understood it once" into something you can do under exam conditions.

Change the plan when you have to

The "what's most likely to go wrong" section is a set of early warnings. It tells you which score to watch and which week to borrow time from. When you do fall behind, paste the plan back in with what actually happened and ask for a revised version from today. Rebuilding is cheap. Pretending you're on schedule is not.

How to use this prompt

  1. [01] Copy

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  2. [02] Fill in

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  3. [03] Vote

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