How to cover JAMB Mathematics in 30 days

Thirty days is enough for JAMB Mathematics. It is not enough to read a textbook cover to cover, and that is the mistake most candidates make: they spend three weeks reading and one week panicking. Reverse it.

Week 1 — find out what you don't know

Sit a full past paper under timed conditions before you revise anything. It will feel bad. It is also the single most useful hour you will spend, because it converts a vague syllabus into a ranked list of your actual weak topics.

Mark it honestly. Group every wrong answer by topic, not by question number. Three wrong answers in Indices is one problem, not three.

Weeks 2 and 3 — one topic at a time, then prove it

Work down your ranked list. For each topic: read the notes once, then answer twenty past questions on that topic alone. Do not move on because you finished reading — move on because you got the questions right.

The topics that reward this most in JAMB Maths are consistently:

• Indices, logarithms and surds — pure marks, pure technique
• Sequences and series — a handful of formulas, asked almost every year
• Statistics: mean, median, mode and standard deviation from grouped data
• Differentiation and simple integration — rate-of-change and area questions
• Geometry: circle theorems and trigonometric ratios

Week 4 — full papers only

Stop studying topics. Sit one complete paper a day at the same time of day as your real exam, in the same layout. You are no longer learning mathematics; you are training pace and nerve.

After each paper, spend twice as long reviewing it as you spent sitting it. Anything you got right by guessing counts as wrong — go back and learn why the answer is what it is.

The part everyone skips

Write down the marks you lost to careless slips rather than ignorance — misread signs, wrong units, an answer transferred to the wrong row. In most mock papers that number is between six and twelve marks. It is the cheapest improvement available to you, and no amount of extra reading will find it for you.