Your scores will plateau. Here is what that means

There is a week, usually about a month out, when the number stops moving. Two sittings in a row within a point or two of each other, and the story you tell yourself gets dark quickly: this is my level; the studying has stopped working; this is what I will score in November.

Fourteen years of watching candidates through this exact week says otherwise. A plateau is nearly always a signal about method, not a verdict about ability. Scores climb fast early because the early gaps are broad and shallow; any studying fixes them. What is left afterwards is narrow and specific, and narrow problems do not respond to general effort. The plateau is the moment your studying needs to get as specific as your remaining gaps.

Three moves that break plateaus

Stop studying subjects. Start studying your misses. At this stage, "another pass at the big areas" is the plateau's best friend, because most of every big area is material you already have. Your last two reviews are a list of the exact questions still costing marks. Sort them, find what repeats, and study only that. If your reports show the same categories at the top twice running, those categories are the whole plan.

Check whether your problem is even knowledge. Plateaued candidates usually assume the gap is legal. Look at how your misses are happening, not just where. Quick unflagged misses point at reading. Misses clustered late in the paper point at stamina and pacing. A pile of changed-to-wrong answers points at second-guessing. Every one of those shows up in your report's insights, none of them is fixed by more reading, and any of them can hold a score flat for weeks while you study the wrong thing harder.

Change the sitting, not just the studying. If every mock happens the same way, evening, tired, half-distracted, the sittings themselves may be measuring your circumstances instead of your preparation. One honest rehearsal-condition sitting, fresh, at the right time of day, full length, sometimes reveals that the plateau lives in the conditions.

The part that is just true

Late gains are smaller and cost more. That is not failure; that is what the top of any learning curve looks like. The candidates who break through the final weeks are not the ones who study more hours. They are the ones whose hours get more specific as the gaps get narrower. Let your reports do the aiming, and spend October on precision.