Reference
Study Schedule
Goal: PASS (47/68 ≈ 69%). Not mastery — passing. This replaces Initial-Plan.md
(which targeted a Jan–Mar window and a topic split that doesn't match the real exam).
14 study days, Tue Sep 8 → Mon Sep 21. Exam Tue Sep 22.
Strategy:
- The exam is an API exam, not a physics exam. Every teaching day is built around "what does this code print / which call is correct," because that's what's asked.
- Sections 1–5 of syllabus.md are 73% of the marks — days 1–6 hammer those. Getting ~85% of just those sections nearly passes you on its own.
- Week 1 (days 1–8) teaches. Every day ends with that day's question bank; wrong answers get re-done next morning (spaced repetition, 15 min).
- Week 2 (days 9–14) converts knowledge into marks under time pressure. No new material. Ten sample papers, one repair day, two full-length dress rehearsals.
Week 1 daily rhythm (≈4–5 h/day):
| Block | Time | What |
|---|---|---|
| Morning review | 15 min | Redo yesterday's wrong answers |
| Lesson | 90 min | daily-practice-sessions/day-XX/lesson.md + linked docs |
| Coding lab | 60–90 min | Labs inside the lesson — run everything in .venv (source .venv/bin/activate) |
| Question bank | 60 min | question-bank.md, closed-book, then grade with solution-bank.md |
| Log | 5 min | Note weak topics in the day's folder in my-notes.md |
Week 2 daily rhythm (≈5–6 h/day): paper → grade → break → paper → grade →
debrief.md. Papers are timed, closed book, no venv. Each of days 9–14 has its
own plan.md (the day's brief) and debrief.md (the worksheet you fill in that
evening); the debriefs are what Day 11 and Day 13 are steered by.
Week 1 — Teaching (Days 1–8)
Day 1 — Tue Sep 8 · Circuits I: construction & gates (§1.1) — 18% section
daily-practice-sessions/day-01-circuit-basics/
- QuantumCircuit anatomy, registers, all gate methods, measure/barrier/reset, compose/append/inverse, circuit properties (depth, size, count_ops), Bell/GHZ construction.
- Watch: Qiskit cert 2.0: How to Prepare (once, for orientation).
Day 2 — Wed Sep 9 · Circuits II: parameterized, dynamic, transpilation (§1.2–1.4)
daily-practice-sessions/day-02-parameterized-dynamic-transpile/
- Parameter/ParameterVector/assign_parameters; if_test/for_loop/while_loop/switch; generate_preset_pass_manager, optimization levels 0–3, transpiler stages, ISA circuits.
- This day closes out the biggest exam section.
Day 3 — Thu Sep 10 · Quantum operations (§2) — 16% section
daily-practice-sessions/day-03-quantum-operations/
- Pauli & SparsePauliOp (little-endian!), .to_matrix(), Statevector/Operator, gate effects on states, entanglement, gate identities (HZH=X…), expectation values.
- Skim Watrous PDF (artifactory
ebooks/) only where the lesson file says so — do NOT read 498 pages.
Day 4 — Fri Sep 11 · Running circuits (§3) — 15% section
daily-practice-sessions/day-04-run-circuits/
- QiskitRuntimeService, backends, least_busy; job vs batch vs session (memorize the decision table); primitives instantiation, PUBs, broadcasting; local testing with StatevectorSampler & fake backends.
Day 5 — Sat Sep 12 · Sampler primitive (§4) + results (§7a)
daily-practice-sessions/day-05-sampler-results/
- SamplerV2 end-to-end: PUB shapes, BitArray/get_counts/get_bitstrings, data. naming trap, shots; dynamical decoupling & twirling options; job retrieval, statuses, service.job(id).
Day 6 — Sun Sep 13 · Estimator primitive (§5) + error mitigation
daily-practice-sessions/day-06-estimator-mitigation/
- EstimatorV2: PUBs with observables, apply_layout trap, evs/stds; precision vs shots; resilience levels 0/1/2, ZNE (noise_factors/extrapolator), TREX, PEC awareness; suppression vs mitigation.
Day 7 — Mon Sep 14 · Visualization (§6) + OpenQASM (§8)
daily-practice-sessions/day-07-visualization-qasm/
- draw(), plot_histogram, plot_bloch_multivector (entangled ⇒ zero vector), qsphere (color=phase); qasm3 dumps/loads, QASM2 interop, reading QASM programs, REST API awareness.
- Two smaller sections (17% combined) — one day is enough.
Day 8 — Tue Sep 15 · Official sample test + gap day (§7b + weakest areas)
daily-practice-sessions/day-08-official-sample-gaps/
- Morning: official Sample Test (
resource-artifactory/official/C1000-179_SAM_SampleTestQiskitv2.pdf) closed-book, timed 25 min. Grade it. Note: official key for Q16 is disputed — twirling is also applied at resilience 2 (Qiskit docs issue #4298). - Afternoon: re-study your 3 weakest topics from the log + finish §7 odds and ends.
- Evening: Sample Paper 01 (half-length, 45 min).
Week 2 — Papers and repair (Days 9–14)
Nothing new is taught from here. Each day below has a plan.md with its timing,
targets and abort criteria, and a debrief.md to fill in that evening.
Day 9 — Wed Sep 16 · Sample papers 02 & 03
daily-practice-sessions/day-09-papers-02-03/
- Paper 02 (code-output heavy), Paper 03 (transpile / execution modes / mitigation). Half-length, 45 min each, timed, closed book. Grade immediately.
- Target ≥24/34 on both. Below 20 on either → Day 10 morning becomes a question-bank redo.
Day 10 — Thu Sep 17 · Sample papers 04 & 05
daily-practice-sessions/day-10-papers-04-05/
- Paper 04 (operators + dynamic circuits), Paper 05 (primitives nuance). Target ≥25/34.
- Evening: pick the three topics Day 11 will repair, ranked by section weight × miss count.
Day 11 — Fri Sep 18 · Weak-topic redo — no new papers
daily-practice-sessions/day-11-weak-topic-redo/
- The only open-book day of week 2. Three weak topics, each repaired by re-reading the lesson section, re-running its lab, redoing that day's question-bank questions closed-book, and writing the rule in one sentence of your own.
- Papers 06–10 stay sealed. They are the last honest measurements left.
Day 12 — Sat Sep 19 · Sample papers 06 & 07
daily-practice-sessions/day-12-papers-06-07/
- Paper 06 (visualization + QASM — the recall-heavy one), Paper 07 (hard, every question has a trap). Expect the score to dip on 07; that is the paper's job.
- Target ≥27/34 on 06, ≥24/34 on 07. Watch pacing as closely as score.
Day 13 — Sun Sep 20 · Paper 08 + §7/§8 consolidation
daily-practice-sessions/day-13-paper-08-consolidation/
- Paper 08 (balanced — held back all fortnight as the fresh measurement for the last flexible day), then §7 and §8 consolidation, then a full
final-review-cheatsheet.mdpass. - Exam logistics get sorted today, not on exam morning. Stop by 9pm.
Day 14 — Mon Sep 21 · Full-length dress rehearsals
daily-practice-sessions/day-14-dress-rehearsal/
- Papers 09 and 10 — FULL LENGTH, 68 questions, 90 min, strict timing, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Target ≥47/68 on both, ≥52 on at least one.
- Evening: read
final-review-cheatsheet.mdonce. Stop by 9pm. Sleep.
Exam day — Tue Sep 22
- Morning: cheatsheet only (20 min). No new material.
- Pacing plan: 68 Q / 90 min → flag anything taking >90 s and return later. First pass ~60 min, second pass ~25 min, 5 min buffer. Nothing left blank — there is no penalty for a wrong guess.
- Remember the top traps: little-endian everywhere · Sampler needs measurements, Estimator must not have them · observables need
apply_layout· ISA circuits required ·resilience_levelis Estimator-only.
Milestones / abort criteria
- By end of Day 6: question-bank scores ≥70% on days 1–6 material. If not, Day 7 morning becomes review (visualization/QASM can survive on half a day).
- Official sample test score (Day 8) is your single best predictor — treat anything <70% there as a red alert and rebalance Days 9–11 accordingly.
- By end of Day 10: ≥70% on half-length papers and a rising trend. A flat trend across four papers means the gap is knowledge, not exam technique — Day 11 is where that gets fixed.
- By end of Day 12: ≥75% on Paper 06. If Papers 06–07 both come in under the pass mark, Day 13 drops Paper 08 and becomes a full consolidation day.
- By end of Day 13: every section at or above half marks on Paper 08. A section still below half is what Day 14's warm-up covers.
- Day 14 is the real check: below 47 on both full-length papers with the exam the next morning means the honest options are a rescheduled exam or accepting the odds — not an all-nighter.