Linear equations
Isolate the unknown, keep both sides honest. Sounds trivial until a fraction or a bracketed negative shows up; that is where I watch students drop easy points.
Topic drills
Every skill the seven OMPT variants test, drilled one page at a time. I group them the way the test thinks: six strands, roughly in the order you should study them. Each drill opens with a free lesson and two worked examples, then gives you ten original problems with full solutions, a table of how each variant tests the skill, and the questions students ask most.
The plumbing of the whole test. Every variant leans on the first five of these, and most lost points I see in sessions trace back here, not to the fancy chapters. Sequences and series is the odd one out: OMPT-G only.
Isolate the unknown, keep both sides honest. Sounds trivial until a fraction or a bracketed negative shows up; that is where I watch students drop easy points.
Factoring, completing the square, and the abc-formula, plus knowing which one saves you a minute. The discriminant question format turns up on nearly every variant.
One habit decides everything here: flip the sign when you multiply or divide by a negative. Quadratic inequalities add a sketch-the-parabola step most students skip at their peril.
Power rules, fractional exponents, and rationalising denominators. The single most-reused skill on the whole test. Get it automatic before touching anything else.
Expanding brackets is mechanical; factoring is pattern recognition. Difference of squares and common-factor extraction cover most of what the OMPT actually asks.
Arithmetic and geometric patterns, the nth term, and the sums of both. Five syllabus topics, 10% of the OMPT-G, and the best hours-to-marks ratio on that paper once the off-by-one stops biting.
Where notation starts doing real work. Domains, graphs, logs and inverses: the middle weight of the OMPT, and the strand that decides most A and B scores.
Domain, range, and reading f(x) notation without flinching. Domain restrictions from roots and denominators are a reliable source of test questions.
Slopes, intercepts, vertices, and intersections. If you can find where a line meets a parabola quickly, a surprising share of the test opens up.
Growth and decay, solving a^x = b, and recognising when an exponential model applies. Pairs directly with logarithms — study them back to back.
Log rules, change of base, and solving logarithmic equations. In my sessions this is the topic with the widest gap between "seen it" and "can do it under time".
Fractional functions: asymptotes, excluded values, and solving equations with x in the denominator, where multiplying through without checking creates phantom solutions.
Chaining functions and undoing them. The mechanical part is easy; the traps are order of composition and domain after inversion.
Only C, D and G carry a geometry chapter, and between them they cover everything from an angle chase to a tangent line. It is also the chapter with the thinnest prep material anywhere, which is why it decides more borderline scores than its weight suggests.
Unit circle first, everything else second. Only B, D and G test trig, but for those variants it is a full chapter you cannot talk your way around.
Radians are the native language of the OMPT trig chapters. Converting fluently and knowing the unit-circle landmarks by heart is non-negotiable.
Sine, cosine, tangent as functions: graphs, amplitude, period, and exact values. Learn the unit circle once, properly, and half this topic is free.
The Pythagorean identity and the double-angle formulas do nearly all the work. The skill is spotting which rewrite turns the question into arithmetic.
Solving sin(x) = c means finding every solution in the interval, not just the calculator one. The forgotten second solution is the classic lost mark.
Derivatives carry the load; integrals appear on B and D. The rules are few; the OMPT tests whether you apply them without a wobble under time.
Limits at infinity and around excluded points, mostly via algebraic simplification. On the OMPT this stays computational — no epsilon-delta in sight.
Power, product, quotient, and chain rule. Chain rule with a function inside a function inside a power is the OMPT's favourite way to separate the prepared from the hopeful.
Tangent lines, extreme values, and optimisation. The derivative is the tool; the question is really about translating a situation into f'(x) = 0.
Antiderivatives and definite integrals as area. Reverse the power rule, mind the +c, and check by differentiating, a ten-second habit that catches most slips.
Substitution carries the load at OMPT level. Recognising the inner function and its derivative sitting next to each other is the entire game.
OMPT-E territory. Counting, chance and summary statistics — light arithmetic, heavy notation, and the strand with the least prep material anywhere else.
Permutations versus combinations: does order matter? Answer that one question correctly and the formulas pick themselves.
Sample spaces, complements, and the addition and multiplication rules. Conditional probability is where intuition fails and the formula must take over.
Expected value, variance, and reading a probability distribution table. The arithmetic is light; the notation is what needs rehearsal.
Mean, median, quartiles, standard deviation — and knowing which one a skewed dataset breaks. OMPT-E leans on these harder than most students expect.
The two chapters of the OMPT-G that are not mathematics, a tenth of the paper each. The physics is small enough to learn in a weekend; what it punishes is unit conversion. The chemistry runs almost entirely through the mole, and the students who skip that step lose the marks.
Motion, forces and energy, in SI units. One of the two OMPT-G chapters that is not mathematics, and the one where the marks go to unit conversion rather than to physics.
Moles, concentration, balanced equations, pH and redox. The second non-mathematical OMPT-G chapter, and the one where nearly every mark runs through a single conversion.
Not sure which of these your variant covers? Each drill lists the variants that test it, and every test hub links back to its own topics.