How to Prepare for your West Africa Examination Council Exam

How to Prepare for your West Africa Examination Council Exam


The West African Examination Council (WAEC) is an examination board that prepares and conducts the West African Senior School Certificate Examination. This senior school certificate is the University entry examinations in West African countries. The participating countries include Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Liberia. Being a regional exam body, WAEC examinations are usually strict and often hard to pass. For the last three consecutive years, 70% of students have failed these exams. However, with adequate preparations, students in West African countries can actually pass this examination. The tips on how to adequately prepare for the WAEC examination form the basis of discussion here below where they will be highlighted.

Tips for Passing WAEC Exams

Have a Decent Timetable for Your Studies
The WAEC examinations are not the kind of exams that students just get in and perform well. You must have a decent timetable that outlines your reading schedule. This schedule should allocate adequate time for all your subjects.

Choose your Subjects Keenly
As an advance preparation for the WAEC exams, students are advised to keenly choose the subjects on the elective pool. A student should only choose a subject that they are comfortable with. Subjects’ choice is usually done two years prior to this exam.

Have Confidence in Yourself
You should be very confident in yourself and believe that you will pass the exams. Though the exams are usually hard for students to pass, a confident student will easily pass the exams and proceed to the University. Therefore, students should exercise self confidence before and during the exams.

Take Notes when you Study
During your allocated time for study, it is important to take notes on some important points. These notes might help you when doing a final revision for the annual WAEC exams.
Revise Past Papers
While doing your revision, you should allocate good time revising the past papers. As a trend by the WAEC, examination tests are drawn from previous papers. They only twist the questions to get a new examination. Therefore, you should not ignore the past papers and actually take it as a preparation strategy to revise them.

Read all the Examination Rules Before Exams
Being a regional examination body, WAEC has strict rules that govern its examinations. You should thus read all the rules before getting into an exam room. Though the rules will be written in front of the question paper, some students fail to read them during examination period and thus show the importance of reading them prior to the exams.

Get Adequate Sleep and Eat Well
As the examination dates approaches, you should have healthy meals and give yourself enough sleeping time. This is one of the preparation strategies that have been ignored by students who opt for extending study hours during the night. This could be the reason for the regular failure by students. Get this strategy right and sleep well.

Compose yourself and Properly Present your Answer
You should plan to compose yourself during the examination. Learn the right sitting postures for examinations. And don’t be in a rush to answer questions during the exams.



The above mention tips should be followed by senior school students who want to prepare adequately for their forthcoming West Africa Examination Council examination.