In one month, don't try to fix everything. Week 1: take one full diagnostic and pick your two or three biggest weak spots. Weeks 2–3: drill only those, in short daily sets, reviewing every miss for the decision that went wrong. Week 4: two timed section run-throughs, one full practice test, then taper. Triage beats coverage when the clock is short.
One month sounds like a crisis, and it doesn't have to be, once you accept the trade: you will not repair every gap in four weeks, so stop trying. The students who gain the most in a month pick a few high-value targets and hit them hard, instead of trying to review the entire test and touching everything so lightly that nothing gets fixed.
A month means you get to say no to most of the test. Pick the two or three things bleeding the most points and starve everything else. That's not cutting corners, that's coaching.
Week 1 — diagnose and triage
Day one: take a full, timed diagnostic under real conditions. Not to feel good, to find the leaks. Then rank them. You're looking for the two or three weak spots that are both frequent (they show up a lot on the test) and fixable in four weeks. A recurring grammar rule is a great target. "Get better at reading comprehension in general" is not; it's too big to close in a month.
Chase the cheap points first. A rule you can memorize, a calculator trick, a question type you always misread. Those pay back this week, not someday.
Sly's instinct is the right one on a short clock: prioritize the fixes with the best return on the time you have left. A single grammar rule or one math procedure can be worth several questions and takes a day to lock in. Deep conceptual gaps that need weeks of rebuilding are real, but they're the wrong project for a four-week window, so note them and let them go for now.
Weeks 2–3 — drill the shortlist
This is the engine of the month. Every day, do a short, focused set on one of your target skills, and for every miss write a single sentence on the decision that went wrong. Rotate through your two or three targets across the week. No full tests in this stretch; full tests measure everything, and right now you only care about a few things. Keep the sessions short enough that you actually do them daily, because daily is what makes a skill automatic.
If a skill isn't on your shortlist, you don't study it this month. That feels reckless and it's the whole point. Coverage is the enemy of a short timeline. Three skills fixed cold will move your score more than fifteen skills poked at once, and you only have time for one of those outcomes.
Week 4 — rehearse and taper
Now bring the test back. Early in the week, do two timed section run-throughs to check that your fixes hold under pressure. Midweek, take one full practice test to rehearse pacing and stamina end to end. Then taper: the last two or three days are for light review and sleep, not new material. Cramming the night before a test you've prepared for four weeks only trades rest for anxiety, and rest wins on test day.
The whole plan lives or dies on Week 1's triage, and a raw score can't triage for you. Forge gives you a full diagnostic that ranks exactly which skills and habits are costing you the most, across five dimensions of reasoning, so on a one-month clock you spend every hour on the highest-value target instead of guessing. When time is short, aiming well is the entire game.
A month is enough to fix a few things well. Pick them on day one and don't look back.