The assessment route that applies to you depends on your exam year, your tier and your exam centre’s arrangements. Cambridge publishes the facts, and your centre makes your entry. This page tells you what to confirm and how to read the questions once you know.
We are not an exam centre. Registration, entry, results and access arrangements belong to your school or exam centre and to Cambridge.
What exactly should you confirm?
Keep a short profile for yourself and fill it from the official sources. The syllabus and exam-year navigator helps you find them, and it will tell you when a combination needs checking instead of guessing.
| Item to confirm | Where to check |
|---|---|
| Entry code is 0654 (not 0653 or a separate science) | Your entry confirmation, then the Cambridge 0654 page |
| Exam year and series you are entered for | Your exam centre |
| Tier (Core or Extended, if your year offers a choice) | Your exam centre and the syllabus document |
| Papers, durations, weightings | The syllabus document for your year |
| Practical or alternative route | Your exam centre and the syllabus document |
| Calculator and data booklet rules | The syllabus document and your centre |
We deliberately do not list paper numbers or durations here. Those change between versions, and a wrong figure would be worse than none.
Why does the route matter for your preparation?
It decides what a full practice session looks like. A student preparing for questions that need extended writing should practise writing, while one expecting mostly short answers should practise precision. The syllabus document tells you which to expect.
It also keeps you away from the wrong resources. The guide to 0653 versus 0654 explains how to compare them, and the scope and entry module gives the steps for confirming your course.
Worked example: reading a command word
Command words tell you how much to write. Take one context and three requests.
Context: Wet washing dries faster on a windy day.
- State: “It dries faster when the wind blows.” One fact, no reason.
- Describe: “The cloth dries more quickly as wind speed increases, and a still day leaves it damp for longer.” What happens, in detail.
- Explain: “Wind carries away water vapour from next to the cloth. This keeps the concentration of water vapour near the cloth low, so more water particles escape from the cloth each second and it dries faster.” A reason, linked to the science.
Cambridge publishes how it uses command words in the syllabus document, so read that list for your year. The question above is ours, written to show the difference, not taken from an exam.
The mistake to watch for
A common slip is to answer “explain” with a description. The student writes “the washing dries quicker in the wind” and stops. The mark needs the reason: removal of water vapour, which keeps the concentration gradient steep.
A quick check is to look for a because or so. If your answer has neither, it is probably a description.
How do you practise the route?
Use mixed questions under your year’s time limits once you know them. Then mark them against explained answers. Our original practice hub gathers sets that do this without copying any exam paper.
Keep an eye on the unit and the number of significant figures your course expects, because calculation marks depend on both. The three-science numerical fluency module practises this.
When does individual help make sense?
If you know the route but your answers still lose marks to the same question style, a teacher can look at how you write answers and adjust one habit at a time. See online one-to-one Co-ordinated Sciences tuition for how we arrange the paid trial, and building a study route to plan the weeks ahead.