KEY POINTS:
Have a good breakfast, leave your cellphone at home and, above all, make sure you're in the right place on the right day.
As 140,000 secondary school students begin their exams today, the examining authority is warning them to pay close attention to their timetable - because every year some students arrive at the wrong time and/or on the wrong day.
Education Minister Chris Carter said yesterday that the National Certificate of Educational Achievement exam process was a huge logistical exercise but he was confident plans were in place for a smooth run.
And he offered his five top tips to students:
* Focus on the relevant material.
* Anticipate likely questions, but prepare for the unexpected just in case.
* Revise, revise, revise.
* Break up intensive periods of study by doing something relaxing.
* Don't take out exam stress on parents or siblings.
Mr Carter said a lot of teenagers would be very stressed over the next couple of weeks.
"I know it's a very stressful time, but there's a wonderful sense of relief when it's over," he said.
The exams start this morning with Level 1 and Level 3 chemistry, level 2 art history and scholarship drama.
In total, students will sit 1.9 million individual standards covering 43 subjects. Level 1 English is the most common, with 48,000 students, while the smallest exam session is Level 3 Latin, involving just 70 students. More than 8000 students are sitting scholarship exams, with some unlucky enough to have them on Saturdays.
The phased introduction of the NCEA system was dogged by problems, which were largely cleared up by last year. However, there is another slight change this year, which will see top-performing students awarded merit or excellence with their certificate.
Mr Carter said that change, designed to inspire students to work harder, was unlikely to cause any problems with the system.
Other changes include the appointment of full-time moderators and reporting "not achieved" results for internal assessments.
The exams finish on Wednesday, December 5. The completed papers will be collected from more than 400 exam centres and distributed to more than 1900 markers. Results are due by the end of January.
EXAM TIMETABLE
MORNING
Level 1 chemistry; Level 2 art history; Level 3 chemistry; scholarship drama.
AFTERNOON
Level 1 information management; Level 2 chemistry; Level 3 art history; scholarship chinese.
