Time management in a 3-hour paper
Most EGBC academic exams are three-hour sittings, and most are followed by 30 minutes to scan and upload what you wrote. This guide suggests one way to spend the three hours. The EGBC rules it relies on are listed at the end.
The time budget and the advice in this guide are Nivaar's suggestions, not EGBC rules. Go by the instructions and marks on your own paper. This guide is Nivaar's own summary and is independent of EGBC. It may contain errors, so check the EGBC details against the sources below.
What is fixed
- Most exams last three hours.
- Most need hand-written solutions, scanned and uploaded as one PDF within 30 minutes of finishing. Those 30 minutes are for scanning and uploading, so plan to have every page finished, numbered and labelled when the three hours end.
- The paper says how many questions to answer. Some past papers let candidates choose, for example any five of eight. Some of our paper pages open with a "Paper format" note that records this for that sitting. EGBC warns that formats change, so read the instructions on your own paper.
Budget by marks
Divide the minutes by the total marks. On a 180-minute paper worth 100 marks, that is 1.8 minutes a mark, so a 20-mark question gets about 36 minutes. If you hold back 15 minutes for reading and checking, work from 165 minutes instead: about 33 minutes for a 20-mark question.
Write the budget at the top of your rough paper as clock times ("Q3 done by 10:40"), so you can see at a glance whether you are behind.
The first few minutes
- Read every question before you write anything.
- Where the paper offers a choice, decide now which questions you will answer, so you do not start one and abandon it halfway.
- Start with the question you are surest of. It gets you writing and leaves the rest of the time for the harder ones.
- Next to your budget, note what each question asks for: its parts, the units and any sketch.
During the paper
- When a question reaches its time, finish the line you are on, leave space, and move on. Come back if time remains. Time spent stuck on one question comes out of the others. We have found nothing EGBC publishes on how partly finished answers are marked, so do not plan around part marks.
- If your exam allows an aid sheet, know where each formula sits on it before the day.
- Write your name, regulator ID and page number on each page as you go, and label every answer with its question number. The 30 minutes after the exam are for scanning and uploading.
The last 15 minutes
- Check your answers. The guide to checking your own answers lists quick checks that fit into a few minutes.
- Put the pages in order and make sure each one is numbered.
- When the exam ends, scan and upload. The exam-day guide covers the upload rules.
Practise the timing
Sit whole past papers in one three-hour block, with only the aids your exam allows. Note how long each question took against your budget, and adjust. EGBC says past papers are a study aid, not your main method of study, so use them to practise timing and to find weak topics. Do your learning from the syllabus and its textbooks.
Keep exam content private
When you sit a real exam, its content is confidential, and that includes your own solutions and rough work. EGBC warns that sharing it, or trying to, may affect your application for registration. Do not send us your exam questions or answers, and do not post them anywhere.
Sources
All checked on 4 October 2026. EGBC updates these documents between sessions; the most recent version on its site always wins over this page.
- EGBC, Academic Exam Regulations (revision of 21 October 2024)
- EGBC, Written Solutions Guide
- EGBC, Past Academic Exams