Stop adding
The instinct in the final week is to cover the material you never got to. It is the wrong move: something learned on Wednesday is not available at speed on Sunday, and the exam requires speed.
Accepting the gap is what frees the week for work that actually changes the score.
Consolidate the nearly known
The highest return in a final week comes from material sitting just below automatic: vocabulary you recognise after a pause, grammar you half remember, kanji that are nearly stable.
Moving those from slow to fast is achievable in days and directly affects a timed exam, which rewards speed rather than depth.
- Review vocabulary you recognise slowly rather than words you do not know.
- Re-drill grammar points you can identify but not use quickly.
- Go over kanji that are nearly stable rather than adding new ones.
- Re-read passages you have already worked through, for speed.
- Skip anything you have never seen; it is out of scope now.
One timed section, not five
A timed section early in the week is useful: it confirms the pacing plan and settles the format. Several of them produce fatigue and diminishing information.
Nothing useful comes from a full paper the day before, and quite a lot of anxiety does.
- One full timed section, early in the week.
- Review it properly rather than moving straight to another.
- Confirm the answering order you will use.
- No papers on the final day.
- Keep one unseen paper for after the exam if you plan to retake.
The admin that catches people
A surprising share of exam-day problems are logistical rather than academic, and all of them are preventable during a week when you should not be studying much anyway.
Do these early in the week rather than the night before.
- Find the voucher and read the requirements printed on it.
- Check the test centre location and how long the journey takes.
- Check the reporting time, which is earlier than the start time.
- Prepare identification, pencils and an eraser.
- Plan for the journey going wrong; latecomers may not be admitted.
The day before
The evening before should be light. A short review of familiar material is fine and reassuring; a full paper or a new grammar chapter is not.
Sleep matters more than the marginal study, because the exam is a long morning of sustained concentration and fatigue costs more than the last chapter would have gained.
- Light review only, of material you already know.
- Pack everything the night before.
- Eat normally; this is not the day to change anything.
- Sleep at your usual time rather than studying late.
- Do not take a practice paper.
On the morning
Arrive early enough that a delayed train is an inconvenience rather than a disaster. Reporting times are before the start time and latecomers may be refused entry.
Once in the room, the useful mindset is procedural rather than anxious: follow the answering order you practised, keep to the per-passage budget, fill every blank before time is called.
The exam rewards steady execution of a plan you already made, which is exactly why the final week is better spent on pacing than on content.
Everything decided in advance is one less thing to decide under pressure. That is the whole argument for spending the last week consolidating rather than cramming.