Preparing for IB Exams Solved: How to Plan the Month, Week and Day before Your Exams?

While other courses such as the HSC, VCE and QCE involve continuous examination which contribute to your final mark, IB students are like Olympic Athletes – all your hard work, dedication and preparation comes down to one day.

Or if you are more of a football fan, you can think of the HSC/VCE/QCE as like the Premier League with many games played over months.

…while IB Exams are the Champion's League Final.

This is one of the best yet scariest aspects of the IB program: the only tasks (other than your internal assessments) that count toward your final score are your final IB exams. However, this can be very advantageous for a number of reasons:

1. Your final exams are the time when you will undoubtably be the most prepared that you can be throughout the program.

2. Mistakes made along the way and exams flunked (yes, I'm looking at you Year 12 half-yearlies) will not at all impact your final score.

3. With the right exam day preparation, you can perform at your peak and succeed! 

So today, let's talk about what our tried-and-tested best strategies to prepare for your final exams.

100 Days before Your Final Exams

Your IAs are wrapping up and after consuming every ounce of your energy for the last few months of your life, it is time to return to subject content. The first 3 things to do for each subject are:

1. Review your study notes: Refresh yourself on the subject content and identify areas of weakness. If you have not yet made subject notes or feel they are incomplete, check out our IB Resources!

2. Construct a study plan for each subject: While ultimately you are preparing for your final exams, your school-based mock examinations will likely be held at least a month prior to the actual IB exams. Our approach is simple: start from your exam date, set yourself revision targets connected to the content which you hope to master and the number of practice papers you aim to complete and work backwards to schedule them in!

3. Get help: Our experience with maximising the results you can obtain from IB tutoring is quite simple…the sooner the better! Don't leave it to the last minute, get in touch, with one of our IB experts who will help with study planning, subject content and exam technique!

Two Months before Your Final Exams

So you have gone back over your subject content and created a plan of action. Now it is time to execute! You should aim to have all your subject notes finished up by now and instead be focusing on completing IB-style questions and past papers.

It is around this time that our IB tutors will generally be working through these practice questions in their sessions and using them as a springboard to review specific content areas that require particular attention for each student. While the process of completing questions itself is quite beneficial, it is the feedback you receive on your responses that delivers real improvement.

In our experience, we have seen students make remarkable progress in these two months alone…some of our students have seen mark increases from a Band 5 to a Band 7 in this time, across multiple subjects!

For example, one of our students from the Class of 2023 finished the mock examinations with a predicted IB score of 32, a long way away from his goal to score 40 in his IB. While we had worked with him through his IAs, he had not yet sought help for subject content and exam preparation.

Over the final month, he worked with IB tutors almost everyday across a number of subjects including English Literature HL (predicted Band 4), Math AI SL (predicted Band 4), Business Management HL (predicted Band 5) and Sports Science HL (predicted Band 5). Alongside many sessions with IB Solved, he put in an exceptional effort and remarkably scored three Band 7s and one Band 6 across these subjects, achieving a final IB score of 43, securing entry into his dream university course!

One Month before Your Final Exams

Usually, around this time you will have just completed your mock examinations. Take a chance to review your performance and be truly honest with yourself about the work you will need to put in over this last stretch. For problem subjects, consider engaging help from an IB expert to help steer you back on track before your final exams.

It is also across this final month that we offer our IB Study Courses. Covering full IB subjects across two intensive days, it is the perfect opportunity to consolidate your knowledge, fill in gaps, and tackle those topics that still feel shaky. Our expert subject specialists break down the syllabus with clear strategies, past paper practice, and targeted revision techniques that align directly with what the IB rewards.

One Week before Your Final Exams

This is the real crunch time.

6 subjects, all with 2-3 Papers, spread across only 2-3 weeks.

So what should you be doing?

As always, it comes down to studying smarter, not harder.

1. Prioritisation of Weaknesses: It sounds obvious, but there is always a natural tendency to avoid the subjects which are the most intimidating. While it can be quite comforting to review and test yourself on your study notes for an easier subject, you will ultimately get the best return on your time by focusing on practising IB-style questions in your weaker subjects.

2. Laser Focus: By this point, you should know exactly which SUB-topics, and question types are a problem area for you and you should focus on these.

3. Memory Refreshing: While you should devote the majority of your time to improving your weaknesses, it is also important to be constantly refreshing your memory of the full course content. This may even just be a quick 15 minute skim through of your notes, which can be highly beneficial for prompting your recognition memory in the exam.

4. Exam Planning: Finally, and arguably most importantly, you need to have a plan for each of your IB exams. You should know exactly how long you will spend on each section of each paper. Tip: Usually, the best way to figure this out is to spread your time across how much each question is worth, using the following calculation:

For example, if you are sitting a Business Management Paper 2 worth 50 marks in 1 hour 45 mins (105 minutes) and you were trying to plan your time, you would calculate as follows:

This means that for 2-mark questions, you should spend approximately 4 minutes, for 4-mark questions approximately 8 minutes and for 10-mark questions approximately 20 minutes. For the whole of Section A (30 marks), you should spend at most an hour.

However, after performing these calculations, you should also personalise them. Perhaps you can usually smash through a 4-mark question in 5 minutes, but your 10-mark questions are an area of weakness. In that case, you may instead allocate 25 minutes to your 10 mark.

One Day before Your Final Exam

So your exam is tomorrow. For some subjects, you may have an entire day free before your exam, while for others, you may only have the afternoon or evening to prepare. So what should you do:

1. Review your subject notes in a relaxing way: By the pool, at the beach, laying down on the couch or in bed – so long as you are comfortable. This is not the time for active learning, but casual review of your study materials, just to strengthen those neural pathways one last time and review any key pieces of content which you had forgot or misunderstood.

2. Do just one more past paper: This will help you switch your brain from whichever exam you just completed back onto the new focus subject. Make sure to mark the paper too so you can reflect on key things to remember for tomorrow. Finally, READ THE MARKSCHEME IN FULL – it contains all the secrets you need to know for tomorrow's exam!

3. Plan for BEFORE the Exam: Have your clothes prepared, bags packed (with all the exam equipment you need), lunch/snacks ready to go and travel arrangements in place.

4. Plan for DURING the Exam: You should know exactly how long you intend to spend on each component of the paper and the order in which you will complete each section.

5. Eat, Move, Break, Sleep: Take care of your body and your mind will reward you in the exam. Ensure your diet is stable and regular throughout your exam block, keep active, take breaks after exams to let your brain and body decompress, and get good sleep. The last point is important to emphasis – we guarantee that there is NOTHING you can do to prepare for an exam that is more valuable than getting 8-10 hours of sleep on the night before.

Exam Day

Your mindset is the most important aspect to be controlled on this day. Stay away from 'panic conversations' with other students – if you have followed all the steps so far, you have absolutely no reason to panic.

Perhaps you may like to bring along a high-level summary document of your notes, nothing more than 10-15 pages covering the course material. It could even be something as simple as the list of topics and subtopics from the subject syllabus. Since most subjects are organised hierarchically (with topic, subtopics, sections and subsections), this high-level overview of the subject can help you to see the bigger picture.

One helpful tip while you are in the exam is rather than treating questions as though they are some test formulated by a divine being in a supernatural universe, just remember that EVERY question was written by an IB examiner trying to assess your understanding of a particular topic/topics. If you can quickly recognise WHY you are being asked a question, this WHY will lead you to the right subject content.

Sometimes, students lose marks because they get the subject content wrong and provide an incorrect answer. Most of the time, students lose marks because they don't even know which subject content to use in their answer.

So put yourself in the examiner's shoes. Think about the topic they are trying to test you on and what you would need to include in your answer to demonstrate that you understand it. 

Does it even matter?

Often, you will hear people say that your final mark doesn't even matter. We believe this to be dishonest, demotivational and fundamentally illogical given the time, resources and sheer effort that each and every one of you put in for your IB.

The only truth of that statement is that it doesn't matter in the way you think it does.

A top IB score will accelerate your path into the field of your choosing for a number of reasons:

• You will be able to get direct entry into your preferred course rather than having to transfer between degrees.

• You can access shorter degrees for the same qualifications.

• You can study at 'better' (more well-recognised) universities and colleges, enhancing your job prospects and creating opportunities to accelerate your career. For some highly exclusive careers, attendance at these types of institutions is a necessity.

BUT a lower than expected IB score does not mean your life is over. Your path may change but if your dreams are genuine and your will is strong, an IB score will not determine your future.

And that's it! Good luck future IB graduates!