This plan is aimed at final-year UK medical students sitting the UKMLA Applied Knowledge Test alongside their medical school finals. The reassuring part is that the two overlap heavily, so the aim is not two separate revision projects but one integrated effort pointed at both. The real constraint is time and placement commitments, and the plan below is built around protecting a small, consistent daily minimum rather than relying on the clear run that a final year rarely provides.
Your starting point
Final year is placement-heavy, with assistantships, on-calls and in-house assessments competing for the same hours. You are preparing for university finals and the AKT together, and while the content overlaps substantially, they are set by different bodies and are not identical. You rarely get long uninterrupted blocks, so the plan has to fit into evenings and the gaps between clinical commitments, and it has to be sustainable across a term rather than depending on a heroic final fortnight. The CPSA, the practical component, is a separate assessment with its own preparation and is not addressed by question practice.
What to actually use
Anchor on a comprehensive question bank — PassMedicine or Quesmed are both well used for finals and the UKMLA, with Quesmed adding an OSCE and notes ecosystem. Use the GMC's published content map and its sample questions to calibrate to the MLA's presentation-led, reasoning-over-recall style. Use your university's own materials and past papers for the finals-specific content. Use iatroX as the free, adaptive layer alongside these: the UKMLA bank is free, mapped to the content map, and re-sequences your practice toward your weak presentations, which means your limited time targets gaps rather than re-covering strengths.
Mapping out the preparation
Think in three overlapping phases across the term rather than rigid blocks. In the coverage phase, work systematically through your main bank by system, aiming for a sustainable daily minimum — a realistic target is a few hundred questions a week, properly reviewed, rather than a larger number skimmed. In the targeting phase, let an adaptive engine surface your weakest presentations and spend the bulk of your time there, while keeping the breadth warm. In the consolidation phase, in the weeks before the AKT, shift to timed practice that matches the real format and rebuild pacing, since the AKT is a single-best-answer exam under time pressure. The weekly minimum is the non-negotiable: protect a consistent daily block even on placement-heavy weeks, because consistency over a term beats intensity in the final fortnight, and the two assessments reward the same accumulated knowledge.
How a working week breaks down
To make the weekly minimum concrete, picture a placement week. On weekday mornings you are on the ward; the study happens in the evening and in gaps. A workable rhythm is a thirty-to-forty-minute adaptive block on most evenings — enough to clear a meaningful set of questions on your current weak system and review them properly — plus a slightly longer session on the one or two evenings you are not post-call. You keep a single system in focus for the week so the learning compounds rather than scattering, and you use any genuinely free weekend half-day for a timed block that mixes systems, which rehearses the integrated recall the AKT demands. Across the week that is perhaps two to three hundred questions, all reviewed rather than skimmed, with the adaptive engine quietly steering you toward the presentations you keep missing. Finals-specific content — the local curriculum quirks, the OSCE-adjacent knowledge — gets folded into the same sessions where it overlaps, and only gets a dedicated slot where it genuinely diverges from the MLA content map. The point of mapping it this way is that none of it depends on a clear week; it survives a busy placement, which is the only kind of week final year reliably provides.
Where iatroX helps
iatroX is the free, adaptive companion to your main bank, not a wholesale replacement for the breadth a finals candidate needs. Its alignment to the content map and its adaptive sequencing mean it points your scarce time at the presentations you are weakest on, and its Socratic Tutor talks you through the reasoning behind a miss rather than handing you the answer — useful precisely because the MLA rewards reasoning over recall. Because it runs on mobile, the adaptive blocks fit into the gaps a placement day leaves, which is often where a final-year student's only spare minutes are.
Reading the signs to adjust
Adjust the timeline to where your AKT sitting falls relative to finals: if they are close together, lean harder on the overlap and avoid treating them as separate syllabuses; if the AKT is later, you can let finals lead and ramp AKT-specific timed practice afterwards. If you fall behind the weekly minimum, shrink the daily target rather than abandoning it — a smaller consistent block keeps the habit alive. The one red flag worth heeding is relying on recognition: if your scores rest on having seen questions before, slow down and rebuild the reasoning, because the exam reframes familiar material.
Questions candidates ask
Do I prepare separately for finals and the AKT? Mostly no — the content overlaps heavily, so integrate them; just respect that they are set by different bodies and check both blueprints.
How many questions a day should I aim for? A sustainable daily minimum you can hold across a term, properly reviewed, rather than a large number skimmed — consistency matters more than volume.
Does this cover the CPSA? No — the CPSA is a separate practical assessment with its own preparation.
Is iatroX free for the UKMLA? Yes — the UKMLA bank is free, so it adds an adaptive layer alongside your main bank at no cost.