Pace, time and the tutor

How pace is tracked

To size your timed rounds, Preppi notes how long you spend on each question you answer: when it was shown, when you answered, and when you left the page or paused for a minute. Only you can read it, and it stays in Preppi.

• What is noted. For a question you answer: when it appeared, when you answered, when the tab was hidden or came back, and when you had not touched the page for a minute. Never what you typed, never your answer text, and nothing about your device.
• What it is for. The small “minutes used” bar, a kind nudge when one question takes twice as long as the real test allows (and a firmer one at three times), how many rounds your minutes make, and your plan: if you stay over the real test's pace in a subject for three sessions, the plan adds timed rounds for it and says so on the Plan page.
• What it is never. A score, a prediction or a judgment. Nothing here is shown on a real timed test, and a nudge only ever says “best guess, then move on; Sal will bring it back”.
• Where it stays. The clock for today is kept in this browser on this device. The question times go to Preppi's own server and nowhere else: no advertising or analytics service sees them. Only you can read them. They are kept for 180 days, and deleted with your account on the Your data page.
• Our choice. The numbers (twice, three times, a quarter over, three sessions) are our own. No study gives a rule for them, so we say so on screen.

Why the tutor does not search the web

The tutor teaches from our approved study notes and a checked list of books and papers. It shows its sources as small chips under a reply, so you can open them and check. It does not search the web.

• It must be checkable. A page found on the web has not been checked by us, so the tutor could repeat a mistake and we could not tell you where it came from. For a medical-school exam, a wrong fact costs more than a missing one.
• It must be allowed. Many web pages do not allow their text to be reused in a product like this. Our notes come from sources whose licenses do, and the Credits page lists every one.
• It must be what you agreed to. The Privacy notice says what the tutor sends to its AI provider. A web search would send more, and we have not asked for that.

If a question is outside what the notes cover, the tutor says so plainly and points you to CEM's own materials. If web search is ever turned on, this page will say so first.