Last-minute IB revision: the final two weeks, the night before, the morning of

In the last two weeks before IB exams, stop learning new material across the board and switch to timed past-paper sections, marked strictly with the markscheme. Spend the time you save on the formula and data booklets, the command terms, and the exact wording that earns marks in your subjects. In the final three days, cut the volume; the night before, review one page per paper and sleep; on the morning, warm up with a few questions you know you can do.

What should you do in the last two weeks before IB exams?

Practise in the format you will be marked in, and use what goes wrong to choose what to revise. Rereading notes feels productive but tells you nothing about which marks you are losing.

Three rules make the fortnight work:

• Order subjects by the exam timetable. Whatever comes first gets the most practice in the final week. A subject whose papers fall in the second half of the session can wait a few days.
• Mark every paper on the same day. An unmarked paper is half the work. Write down each lost mark with its cause: knowledge gap, wrong depth for the command term, imprecise wording, method or rounding, or time.
• Practise at exam time of day. If a paper is in the morning, do its timed blocks in the morning. You want your best concentration to happen when the paper does.

Your timing targets come from the papers themselves: divide the minutes by the marks. Biology HL Paper 2, for example, gives you 150 minutes for 80 marks, a little under 2 minutes per mark. There is a table for every paper in IB exam time management.

What should you revise when time is short?

Revise what earns marks quickly and appears on almost every paper.

The formula and data booklets

Know where things are before you sit down. A clean copy is provided in the exam, so the skill is finding a value or formula in seconds, not memorising the booklet.

• Chemistry: you get the data booklet in Paper 1 and Paper 2 at SL and HL. Do every practice calculation with it open, so you know which constants and data are in it and which you must recall.
• Maths AA and AI: each has its own formula booklet, provided clean in every paper. Know which formulae are in it and, just as important, which ones are not.
• Biology (2026 and 2027 exams): there is no data booklet. You need equations such as magnification (image size ÷ actual size) and percentage change from memory. The Biology data booklet starts with the 2028 exams.
• ESS: the guide mentions no data booklet. Learn the formulae your teacher has flagged, and practise them with your calculator.

Command terms

Spend fifteen minutes making sure you know what depth each command term in your subjects asks for. "Describe" a graph means the trend with figures; "explain" means reasons; "evaluate" means a judgement. Answering at the wrong depth is a fast, avoidable way to lose marks. Our command terms guide covers them all.

The wording that earns marks

Go through the markschemes of the papers you have done and list, in your own words, the precise points that came up more than once. In Biology that might be "the active site changes shape" rather than "the enzyme stops working"; in Chemistry, "greater nuclear charge, same shell, similar shielding" for ionisation energy trends. One page per subject is enough.

Your weakest past-paper sections

Use your error log to choose. If Paper 1B data questions keep costing you, do three more of them, not another full paper. See where to find IB past papers if you are running short.

What should you stop doing in the last two weeks?

• Starting new resources. A new revision guide or video series now mostly shows you how much you have not seen. Stick with the notes and questions you know.
• Rewriting notes neatly. It takes hours and builds very little exam skill. Make one-page summaries instead.
• Marking yourself generously. If your wording does not clearly match the markscheme point, the mark is gone. Generous marking hides exactly the losses you need to fix.
• Late nights to catch up. Losing sleep to cover one more topic usually costs more on the paper than the topic adds.
• Comparing yourself to group chats. Someone always claims to have done ten papers. Your error log is the only comparison that helps.

What should you do in the final three days?

Cut the volume, keep the rhythm. One or two timed sections a day in the next subjects up, marked and logged, is enough to keep your timing sharp without draining you.

• Write one page per paper. The formulae you must recall, the markscheme wording you listed, your top three repeat mistakes and their fixes, and your minutes-per-mark target.
• Check your calculator now, not on the morning. It must be an approved model, updated, and you must know your school's exam-mode procedure. For example, TI-Nspire models need OS 5.4 or later and Press-to-Test, and NumWorks needs OS 18.1.0 or later with IB exam mode. TI-84 users do not use the built-in test mode; the calculator is reset instead. Your coordinator has the current rules, and GDC calculator mistakes covers the errors that cost marks once you are in the room.
• Confirm the timetable with your coordinator. Check dates, start times and rooms for every paper, so nothing depends on memory.

What should you do the night before an IB exam?

Very little, on purpose.

1. 30 to 60 minutes of light review. Read your one-page summary for tomorrow's paper. Flick through the formula or data booklet section by section so you know where everything is. Do not start a new past paper; one bad question at 10 pm does nothing for your confidence.
2. Pack your bag. Pens in the colour your school specifies and a spare, pencil, ruler, eraser, your calculator with fresh batteries and spares, a clear water bottle if allowed, and anything else your school lists. Lay out what you will wear.
3. Stop working at a set time and do something ordinary: food, a walk, a programme you have seen before.
4. Go to bed at your usual time. A full night's sleep will do more for tomorrow's paper than an extra hour of notes. If you lie awake, rest anyway; one restless night does not decide an exam.

What should you do on the morning of the exam?

• Eat what you normally eat. Exam morning is not the day to try a new breakfast or a stronger coffee than usual.
• Warm up for 15 minutes. Do three or four short questions you know you can answer in that paper's style. For Maths AA Paper 1, that might be a non-calculator derivative and a simple log equation; for Chemistry, a moles calculation with the data booklet open. The point is to start the paper already in gear.
• Read your one-page summary once. Then put it away.
• Arrive early and avoid the corridor conversation about what might come up.
• Set exam mode on your calculator when told to, following the instructions. The rules say it has to go on immediately before the exam and stay on throughout.

In the room, use the pacing you practised: minutes per mark, move on from a stuck question, come back at the end.

What if you have two papers on the same day?

Treat the gap as part of the exam day, not a revision session.

• Do not discuss the first paper. Comparing answers can only unsettle you, and nothing you learn can change your mark. Leave the post-mortem until your last exam is over.
• Eat a proper meal and drink water. Get outside for ten minutes if you can.
• Spend 20 minutes on the next paper's one-page summary, then stop. The heavy work for that paper was done in the last two weeks.
• Repack for the second paper. Check that your calculator, pens and anything paper-specific are still with you.

If you have several papers in a row over a few days, the same rule applies between them: short review of the next paper's summary, real meals, normal sleep. The fortnight before was for building marks; the exam days are for collecting them.