Using the Source Material

Many exam-takers have asked me whether it's important to read the source material. There's isn't a simple yes/no answer but here are a few points to keep in mind:

• The main thing is to know how to do the past exam problems. If you're absolutely solid on the past 5 exams (at least) which is roughly 150 questions, you're in good shape. But I mean really solid. You should know them backwards and forwards and in your sleep.
• For the SAO material you should definitely use the source text heavily. It's well-written and I didn't want to just copy from that into my wiki articles. Here I'd advise doing the exam problems all the way back to 2012. You know this will be heavily tested.
• For the top 6 readings, it will probably be helpful to keep the source texts handy. You might not read them from start to finish since that would take a lot of time for probably not much gain, but there could be certain sections and/or examples that would help your understanding. That's a matter of judgment.
• For readings 7-12, same comment. But generally as you get lower in the ranking table, there's less need to refer to the source text. Again, the most important indicator of whether you're ready is if you can do the problems from the last 5 exams (at least). By exam time, these problems should seem very easy to you.
• For readings ranked 43 and lower, I'd say there isn't much to be gained from the source readings since those readings are not heavily tested.

So I hope that helps. Sometimes exam-takers say they're going to read the source material from start to finish as their first step in studying. I would highly recommend against that. This is not a good use of your time. At the beginning of your study, you don't know what's important or what typically appears on the exam. You may spend a lot of time on a topic that is not important and then skim over something that's extremely important. The ranking table gives you a broad idea of the relative importance of various topics and you should always start by reading the wiki article and attempting the quiz questions. Once you've done that, you will have a much better sense for which sections within the source material will be most helpful in learning how to do problems of the type that appear on the exam.