How Many Questions a Day to Pass EDAIC Part 1?

How many questions a day for EDAIC: realistic targets

Here are sensible EDAIC questions per day targets, expressed as stems, assuming you study most days with one or two rest days a week. Treat them as starting points, not commandments — adjust to your baseline and your life.

Time until exam	Daily stems (new + review)	Approx. statements/day	Weekly rhythm
6 months	20–30	~100–150	5–6 study days, lighter weekends
4–5 months	30–40	~150–200	5–6 study days
3 months	40–60	~200–300	6 study days, one full rest day
6–8 weeks (final sprint)	60–80+	~300–400+	6 study days, heavy review weighting

A few things to read into that table.

The statements-per-day column is the one that actually reflects effort, because each A–E statement is a discrete learning event. Forty stems a day sounds modest until you realise it is roughly 200 true/false calls plus the reading you do around the ones you miss.

The longer your runway, the more you can lean on spacing rather than volume. With six months, 20–30 well-reviewed stems a day, repeated and revisited, comfortably covers the syllabus more than once. With three months, you are doing more per day simply because you have fewer days — not because cramming is superior.

These figures assume you are using a structured EDAIC question bank rather than scattered PDFs, so that your stems are mapped to the syllabus and your review is tracked automatically.

A worked example: the 3-month plan

Say you have roughly 13 weeks. A workable shape:

Daily target: 40–50 new stems plus a growing pile of review stems.
Split: mornings for new material in your weakest paper, evenings for review of earlier misses.
Weekly: one timed block of 60–90 stems under exam conditions to build stamina.
Built-in slack: one full rest day, and one "catch-up" half-day so a bad week doesn't derail you.

Over 13 weeks at ~45 new stems a day, six days a week, you clear well over 3,000 distinct stems — and because of review, you actually see far more repetitions than that. That is a serious volume of high-yield pharmacology and physiology practice, the two areas that reward question-based learning most.

A worked example: the 6-month plan

With ~26 weeks, the same destination is reached at a kinder cadence:

Daily target: 20–30 new stems, plus review.
First half: prioritise breadth — get one clean pass across Paper A and Paper B.
Second half: prioritise depth and weak spots, increasing review weighting and adding timed mocks.

The six-month route is not "easier", it is safer: it leaves room for clinical on-calls, leave, and the inevitable bad week without forcing you into a panic sprint.

How many MCQs is "enough" to pass?

This is the real heart of the daily question target for EDAIC question. "Enough" is not a fixed quota, and it is worth understanding why.

EDAIC Part 1 is criterion-referenced (an Angoff-style standard): the pass mark reflects a defined standard of competence, not a quota or a curve. You are not competing against other candidates for a fixed number of seats. That means your job is to reach a standard, and questions are simply the most efficient way to find and close the gaps between you and that standard.

So "enough" is better defined by coverage and retention than by a raw total:

Coverage: have you seen questions across the whole syllabus — anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, physics and clinical measurement, equipment and statistics for Paper A; and the full clinical breadth of Paper B?
Retention: when a topic comes back a week or two later, are you getting it right for the right reason, not by luck?
Stability: are your scores on fresh, unseen questions plateauing at a comfortable margin above where you think the standard sits?

When those three are true, you have done enough — whether that took 4,000 stems or 9,000. If you want the full picture of how the standard is set and what the pass mark really means, read our explainer on the EDAIC pass rate and pass mark. And because the format itself shapes scoring, the MTF technique with no negative marking is essential reading before you obsess over totals.

The no-negative-marking rule changes your maths

Negative marking was removed in 2014. A correct statement scores; a wrong or blank statement scores zero. There is no penalty for a guess.

Practically, this means you should answer every single statement — never leave A–E blank. It also means your practice should build the habit of committing to true/false on all five, even when you are unsure, because in the real exam a blank is simply a wasted opportunity. Bake this into your daily questions: no skipping statements, ever.

Quality beats quantity: reviewing wrong answers

If you take one thing from this article, take this — your daily number is far less important than what you do with the wrong ones. A high stem count with shallow review is the most common way capable candidates underperform.

A repeatable review routine

For every statement you get wrong — and every one you got right but were unsure about — do this:

Name the reason. Was it a knowledge gap, a misread stem, a misremembered value, or a careless slip? Be specific.
Find the underlying principle, not just the fact. "Suxamethonium raises serum potassium" is a fact; understanding why depolarising block leaks potassium lets you answer ten related statements.
Write one line in your own words — a single, retrievable note, not a paragraph copied from a book.
Schedule a re-test. Put that statement back in your path in a few days, then again later.

That fourth step is where most of the gain lives, and it is why spaced repetition as a memory method is the single most powerful technique for this exam. Reviewing a miss once is good; reviewing it at expanding intervals is what makes it stick until exam day.

The 1:1 rule of thumb

A useful heuristic: spend at least as long reviewing as you spend answering. If 40 stems take you 45 minutes to work through, budget at least 45 minutes to review them properly. Many strong candidates run closer to 1:1.5 in the final month, doing fewer new questions and far more deep review.

This is also why blindly chasing a huge daily number backfires. If you cannot review what you answer, you are not learning — you are just generating data you will never use. For more on extracting maximum value per question, see how to use an EDAIC question bank effectively.

How many MCQs to practise for EDAIC across the whole prep

Zooming out from the daily dose to the campaign: a common, sensible question is how many MCQs to practise for EDAIC in total. Rather than a target total, aim for these milestones:

One full pass of a comprehensive bank across both papers, so nothing in the syllabus is genuinely unfamiliar.
A focused second pass weighted toward your weak areas and the topics you got wrong first time.
Several timed mock sittings in the final 4–6 weeks to build pace and exam temperament.

If your bank is large and well-mapped to the syllabus, one full pass plus a targeted second pass plus mocks will usually take you comfortably past the standard — provided your review has been honest. A structured syllabus breakdown helps you confirm you have actually touched every corner, rather than over-practising the topics you already enjoy.

Balance Paper A and Paper B

Do not let your daily questions skew toward whichever paper you find more comfortable. Paper A (Basic Sciences) and Paper B (Clinical Anaesthesia and Intensive Care) both need consistent daily attention. Trainees often neglect Paper B's intensive care content because their day job is theatre-based — if that is you, deliberately weight some daily stems toward intensive care and Paper B. For the full structure of both papers, see the Part 1 format: Paper A and Paper B.

Fitting the daily dose around real life

You are doing this alongside clinical work, on-calls and a life. The plan has to survive contact with reality.

Protect a minimum, not a maximum. On a brutal post-call day, doing 10 stems and reviewing them beats doing zero and feeling guilty. A small daily streak compounds; an all-or-nothing mindset collapses.

Front-load new material, back-load review. Early in your timeline, weight toward new questions to build coverage. As the exam nears, flip it — fewer new stems, more review and more timed practice. The final stretch is about consolidation, not discovery; our final-month revision plan walks through exactly how to taper.

Use your commute and gaps. Ten or fifteen statements while you wait is real progress. The MTF format is well suited to short bursts on a phone.

Plan deliberate rest. One genuine rest day a week protects retention and prevents burnout. Sleep is not optional for memory consolidation — it is part of the method.

For the bigger strategic picture of how all this fits together, the complete EDAIC Part 1 preparation guide and our overview of the EDAIC Part 1 exam are good companions to this daily-dose plan.

A note on dates and registration

The confirmed Part 1 written exam date for the 2026 cycle is 19 September 2026. The registration window for that sitting has already closed. For the next cycle's dates, current fees, eligibility and registration steps, always confirm on the official ESAIC/EDAIC (myESAIC) website rather than relying on any figure quoted second-hand. If you are mapping your countdown now, our overview of the 2026 dates and registration process is a useful orientation, but treat the official site as the single source of truth for deadlines.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions a day should I do for EDAIC Part 1?

As a rule of thumb: 20–30 stems a day with six months to go, 40–60 with three months, and 60–80+ in a final sprint — remembering each stem carries five A–E statements, so the real workload is several times the stem count. Adjust to your baseline and, crucially, leave time to review every miss.

Is it better to do more questions or review more carefully?

Review more carefully, almost always. A smaller number of deeply analysed questions beats a large number of skimmed ones. Aim to spend at least as long reviewing as answering, and re-test your wrong answers at spaced intervals so they actually stick.

How many MCQs in total are "enough" to pass?

There is no fixed total, because the exam is criterion-referenced — you must reach a defined standard, not beat a quota. Practically, aim for one full pass of a comprehensive bank across both papers, a focused second pass on weak areas, plus several timed mocks. When your scores on fresh questions plateau comfortably above the standard, you have done enough.

Should I answer every statement even when unsure?

Yes. Negative marking was removed in 2014, so a blank scores zero just like a wrong answer — there is no penalty for guessing. Build the habit in practice of committing to true or false on all five statements every time. See our marking and scoring guide for how the scoring works and how to reason under uncertainty.

Can I just cram in the last few weeks?

You can raise your daily volume in a final sprint, but cramming new material late is far less effective than steady, spaced practice. The final weeks should be weighted toward review and timed mocks, consolidating what you already know rather than meeting topics for the first time.

Ready to turn a daily number into a real result? Create a free AnesCORE account to start building a sustainable daily habit, and put it to work in our syllabus-mapped EDAIC question bank — where every wrong answer is tracked and scheduled back to you until it sticks.