A month sits between two kinds of preparation. Two weeks is triage: you pick a few weaknesses and accept the rest. Six weeks or more is a build, with room to learn every format calmly and then practise it at length. Four weeks has some of both. It is enough time to meet every task type properly and do one full cycle of learning, timed practice and rehearsal. It is not enough to repeat that cycle, so every week has one job, and a week spent on the wrong thing is a quarter of the plan gone. If you have longer, the six-week plan gives you more slack. If you have less, the two-week plan is more honest about what will fit. What follows assumes a month and a normal week around it, meaning an hour or so on most weekdays and a longer block at the weekend.
Before day one: find out where you stand
A month-long plan built on a guess fails quietly. You spend the first fortnight on whatever feels weakest, and you find out in week three that the real problem was somewhere else. So start with evidence. Sit a full practice test under timed conditions before you plan anything, even if you expect it to go badly. A low baseline is useful. A missing one is not.
Then read the result by task type, not by total. Note which of the three Core subtests (figure sequences, mathematical equations and Latin squares) cost you the most. Note how your subject module went against the Core. And for each wrong answer, note whether you had no method, had a method but ran out of time, or knew the answer and slipped. That last split matters most in a month, because only the first kind is a learning problem. Timing improves as method becomes automatic. Slips improve when you change how you check. Neither needs a week of study.
Finally, decide how to split your time between the modules. Make it a ratio you write down, based on what the baseline showed, not on which material you enjoy. You can adjust it once at the halfway point. Changing it weekly means you never really commit to either.
Week one: learn every format properly
The first week is for method, and the clock stays off. Work through each task type on the syllabus slowly enough to understand why a correct answer is correct. Pick a procedure for each one and use it until it runs without hesitation. Untimed work feels slow and unproductive. It is also the only stage where method actually gets built, and a month gives you just enough room for it. Skipping it to start "real" timed practice early is the most common way to waste a four-week plan.
Give every Core format at least one proper session, including any you think you already know, because your baseline may have flattered them. On the subject module side, practise an approach rather than collecting facts: what you read first in a passage or table, how you mark what a question is asking, when you go back to the source. Start an error log this week if you do not already keep one. In three weeks it will tell you what to work on, which saves you guessing.
Week two: put the clock back on
Now add time, a little at a time. Do short timed sets on one task type, then mixed sets that make you switch between types, because switching is part of the exam and costs more than candidates expect. Set a pace target per section and check yourself against it, not against a feeling of being fast.
Spend at least as long reviewing each set as you spent sitting it. A set you do not review properly mostly confirms habits you already have, good and bad. By the end of the week your error log should be shifting. The "no method" entries should be thinning out, and what is left should be mostly timing and slips. If one task type still produces "no method" errors, that is your main problem for week three.
Week three: rehearse the full sitting
Early in week three, sit a second full paper. Sit it at the same time of day as your test, on a screen, in one go, with no pausing to check an answer. The score is less important than the comparison. Has the weakness from your baseline held up under time? Where did your concentration drop? Did any section run short? Compare this sitting with the first one by task type, the same way you read the baseline.
Spend the rest of the week on what that paper showed, and only that. This is the one time in a month you get to correct course with real information, so do it. If a second full paper fits comfortably at the end of the week, it is worth sitting. If fitting it in means losing review time, skip it. One sitting you understand beats two you only scored.
Week four: consolidate and stop
The final week takes away rather than adds. Go back over the procedures you built in week one and the errors you logged since, without starting anything new. Keep sessions shorter than in earlier weeks. A last timed set early in the week is fine. A new full mock in the last few days usually is not, because a bad number that close to the test costs more confidence than it gives you information. The final week before the dMAT covers the last few days in more detail, including the practical checks on documents, travel and timings that are best done early.
A month is a real amount of time if you use it in order: evidence first, then method, then timing, then rehearsal, then rest. Most of the ways a four-week plan fails come from reshuffling that order, usually by rushing to timed practice before there is a method to time. If you keep the sequence, the month is enough.
