How to organize a four-week study plan for the ICFES

This plan is designed for someone with one to two hours a day on weekdays and a bit more on weekends. If you have less time, keep the structure and reduce the number of questions. If you have more, expand your practice before adding more topics.

Before you start: three things to know

1. Your starting point. Take a timed diagnostic by area or, if you can, a full session. Write down your result by area and, above all, which type of question you missed.
2. Your goal. Check what the program you want to get into requires. If the university weights certain areas, those areas move up your list.
3. Your real time. Count the hours you actually have each week, after school, work, commuting and rest. A plan that doesn't fit in your week won't get done.

How to decide what to study first

Combine two things: the weight of each test and your diagnostic result. The four tests with a weight of 3 move the overall score more (we explain it in how the score works). Within them, start with the areas where you miss questions for lack of practice: they usually improve faster than an area where you're missing years of foundations.

Critical Reading deserves a fixed spot even if you do well in it. Reading a prompt, a table or a chart carefully is something you do in all five tests.

Week 1: diagnostic and foundations

The goal is to know where you stand and review what comes up most often.

• Days 1 and 2: timed diagnostic by area. Review every mistake and classify it (we explain how below).
• Days 3 to 6: review the basics in your two weakest areas. In Mathematics, for example: percentages, proportionality, reading charts and counting.
• Day 7: rest or a light review of your mistake log.

Week 2: practice by area

• Work on one main area each day plus a short block of another.
• Do timed blocks of 20 to 30 questions. When you finish, review all of them, even the ones you got right by intuition.
• Start measuring your pace. As a reference, if you split a session's time across all its questions, you get between 1.7 and 1.9 minutes per question.
• If English isn't your priority, two or three 20-minute blocks a week keep you in rhythm.

Week 3: practice by session

Now the goal is to combine areas the way the real exam does.

• Do two or three practice rounds that mix the tests of one session: for example, Critical Reading, Mathematics, Social Studies and Natural Sciences, as in the morning session.
• Get used to switching areas without losing focus. In the exam you can go from a philosophical text to a physics problem in a few minutes.
• Keep up your mistake log and review only the topics that show up in it.

Week 4: mock exam and adjustments

• At the start of the week, take a full-session mock exam: 4 hours and 30 minutes, ideally at the same time as the real exam. If you can, do the other session on another day.
• Review the mock exam calmly the next day. Look for patterns: did you miss more at the end because of fatigue? Did you have time left over, or not enough? In which test?
• In the last three or four days, keep reviews light and skip new topics. Check your exam summons and get your ID and materials ready: it's all in what to bring on exam day.

The mistake log

Writing down "I got number 14 wrong" doesn't help much. For each mistake, record why it happened:

• Concept: you didn't know the topic or remembered it wrong.
• Reading: you misread the prompt, the table or what was being asked.
• Procedure: you set it up correctly but made a calculation error.
• Time: you rushed the answer or ran out of time.

At the end of each week, count how many mistakes you have of each type. If most are reading mistakes, more theory won't help; what helps is practicing reading prompts more carefully.

Where to find questions

Icfes publishes question booklets for each test in the real exam format. Use them as a reference for style and difficulty.

In Yukiia you can practice by area, by session and with full mock exams, and your plan adjusts to your results. It lets you follow this structure without putting together each practice round by hand. If you want to understand the difference between those three ways of practicing, it's explained in the frequently asked questions about the ICFES.