Exam Day Checklist: What to Bring, Hour by Hour

Quick answer: Bring photo ID or your admit card, at least two black pens, two pencils, an eraser, a sharpener, a 30 cm ruler, a clear pencil case, an approved calculator with fresh batteries, an analogue watch, and a clear label-free water bottle. Leave your phone, smartwatch and any notes at home. Pack it all the night before.

I forgot a pen once. Not a spare pen, the pen. My case held three highlighters, a protractor I did not need, and one biro that died eleven minutes into an English paper. An invigilator found me a spare, but I lost four minutes and far more than four minutes of calm. Now I pack the same way every time, written down rather than remembered, because memory is what fails you at 7am.

The core kit: what to bring to every exam

This covers every paper I have sat in IGCSE and A-Level, and maps onto what CBSE, AP and WAEC centres expect. Pack it all even for a paper that "only needs a pen".

• Two black ballpoint pens, plus a third in your pocket. Not gel, not fountain: scripts get scanned and gel ink smudges.
• Two sharpened HB pencils, a sharpener and a clean eraser. WAEC and AP multiple-choice sheets are machine-read and need pencil.
• A 30 cm clear ruler, plus protractor and compasses for any geometry. Graph questions eat marks when your line is freehand.
• Your calculator, tested that morning, with the batteries you replaced last week.
• An analogue watch, not a smartwatch. The hall clock is usually behind you.
• A clear pencil case, or everything loose on the desk.
• A clear water bottle with the label peeled off.
• Admit card, candidate number and photo ID, in a pocket, not in the bag you leave at the door.
• A jumper. Exam halls are colder than the corridor.

What your board actually allows

Rules differ, and the differences are what people get wrong. Check your centre's instruction sheet, but broadly:

• Cambridge IGCSE and International A-Level, and UK GCSE (AQA, Edexcel, OCR): black ink only, clear pencil case, clear bottle with no label. Calculators must not do symbolic algebra or store text. Phones and smartwatches are banned even switched off.
• CBSE: admit card plus school ID is non-negotiable, and you write in blue or black ball pen. Calculators are not allowed in Class 10 and 12 board papers. You also get 15 minutes of reading time, which most students waste.
• AP: photo ID, pencils for multiple choice, black or dark blue pen for free response, and an approved graphing calculator on the papers that permit one.
• WAEC and WASSCE: photo examination card, HB pencil and eraser for the objective sheet, a biro for the essay paper, a mathematical set, and a silent non-programmable calculator where allowed.

The rule that catches everyone out is the same one: a phone in your pocket counts as having a phone, off or not.

The night-before pack: a ten-minute routine

Do this at a fixed time, not "before bed", because "before bed" moves.

1. Empty bag on the floor, list on your screen. Load equipment first, saying each item out loud. It sounds silly and it works.
2. Test the calculator. Type 2 + 2, then a square root. If the display is faint at all, change the battery tonight.
3. Put the admit card or ID in the same pocket every time. Mine goes in the left side pocket.
4. Fill the bottle and peel the label off now, not in the queue.
5. Check the paper time and room on your centre's timetable, not the group chat. Group chats are wrong roughly once a season.
6. Two alarms: one on the phone, one on something that is not the phone. Then put the phone in the kitchen.
7. Read one page of summary notes. One page, not a chapter. Lights off, eight hours.

The morning of: a timeline that works

Say the paper starts at 9:00. Working backwards:

• 6:45 wake up. You want your brain properly awake for two hours before you have to think.
• 7:00 protein and slow carbs. Eggs on toast, or oats. Coffee on an empty stomach with exam nerves leaves you shaky by question three.
• 7:20 read your one-page summary, or run a short deck through flashcards. Recall only, nothing new. New content on exam morning does nothing except tell your brain there is a gap.
• 7:45 bag check against the list. Thirty seconds.
• 8:00 leave, an hour early. Arriving early costs nothing; arriving late can cost the paper.
• 8:30 at the centre. Skip the revision huddle outside the door; it exists to make everyone anxious.
• 8:50 two rounds of box breathing, four in, four hold, four out, four hold. Toilet. Then in.

The first five minutes in the hall

Before you write a single word:

1. Fill in your candidate details. Every year someone forgets, and it is an awful way to lose marks.
2. Read the whole paper. All of it. You want no surprises on page nine.
3. Underline the command word in every question: describe, explain, evaluate, calculate, justify. Describe and explain carry different mark schemes.
4. Star two questions you know you can do well, and start with one. Momentum is real.

Timing: turn marks into minutes

This is the calculation almost nobody does, and the most useful thing here.

Take an AQA GCSE paper worth 80 marks in 1 hour 45 minutes. That is 105 minutes. Subtract 5 for reading and 10 for checking, and you have 90 minutes for 80 marks: about 1.1 minutes per mark. A 6-mark question gets 7 minutes, a 2-mark question gets 2. If you are 12 minutes into a 6-marker, you are stealing from something else.

Now a CBSE Class 10 paper: 80 marks in 180 minutes, plus 15 minutes reading time. That is 2.25 minutes per mark, which is generous, so the failure mode flips. There the risk is over-writing the one-markers and rushing the five-markers at the end.

Work your own number out the night before and write it at the top of your rough page. Then check the clock at halfway only. Checking every five minutes is its own kind of panic.

Five things I have watched go wrong

• A dead calculator battery in a physics paper. Twenty minutes of arithmetic by hand.
• A smartwatch left on a wrist. That ended in a very quiet conversation outside.
• A bottle with the label still on, taken at the door, so no water for two and a half hours.
• Blue ink on a paper whose booklet asked for black.
• The wrong room, because the timetable changed and the group chat did not.

None are knowledge problems, and all of them cost real marks. That is the point of a checklist: it removes a whole category of loss that has nothing to do with revision.

Test yourself

1. A paper is worth 100 marks and lasts 2 hours. After 5 minutes reading and 10 minutes checking, how long do you have per mark?
2. Name three items that must not be on you when you walk into the hall.
3. You cannot start a question. How long do you give it before moving on, and what do you do to it?

Answers: about 1.05 minutes per mark, so roughly 6 minutes for a 6-marker; phone, smartwatch, and any notes or loose paper; 90 seconds, then circle the number, leave a gap, come back at the end.

FAQ

Can I take a water bottle into the exam hall?

Usually yes, if it is clear plastic with the label peeled off. Cambridge and UK centres are strict here, because a label can hide notes. Fizzy drinks and opaque flasks are refused at the door.

What happens if I forget my calculator?

Tell an invigilator before the paper starts, because most centres keep spares. Never borrow one from another candidate once the exam has begun, since that counts as communication. This is why you test the batteries the night before.

Should I revise on the morning of the exam?

Only recall of things you already know, for about twenty minutes. A one-page summary or short flashcard run is fine. Opening a new topic at 7:30am adds no knowledge and a lot of panic.

Is a smartwatch banned even switched off?

Yes, across all five systems above. The rule is about possession, not use. Leave anything with a screen at home or hand it in, and wear a cheap analogue watch instead.

In short

An exam day checklist protects marks you have already earned. Pack the night before, test the calculator, peel the label, leave the phone at home, arrive early, read the whole paper before writing, and work out your minutes per mark. None of it is clever. All of it is the difference between sitting down calm and sitting down already behind. To practise that calm rather than hope for it, sit one full timed paper on mock exam first, and use the rest of the study tools in the weeks before.