dMAT Exam Day: ID Rules, What to Bring & What's Banned

The dMAT is proctored under strict, published rules — g.a.s.t.'s own terms and conditions spell out exactly what's checked, what's banned, and what gets you excluded. None of this is exam strategy; it's the logistics of the day itself, worth knowing before you're standing at the test center.

Ahead of the 26 September 2026 sitting, g.a.s.t. published a dedicated candidate-instructions sheet covering check-in, ID, exam rules and the break, and reissued a revised version of it on 21 September. Where it goes further than the general terms — and in a couple of places it does — the details below follow it. The revision also added guidance that isn't about the exam room at all, covered in the last section on this page: what to do about your APS file while your result is pending.

The consent form: the step that actually sends your result to APS

This is the one item on the list that isn't about staying out of trouble, and it's the easiest to underestimate because it takes ten seconds and sits in the middle of an otherwise stressful morning.

At the test center you will be asked to sign a Declaration of Consent. Its purpose is narrow and specific: it authorises g.a.s.t. to transfer your examination result to the Academic Evaluation Centre (APS) in New Delhi. g.a.s.t. states plainly that without your consent, it cannot transfer your result to APS.

Why that matters more than it sounds: g.a.s.t. and APS India are two separate organisations. g.a.s.t. runs the test and issues the dMAT certificate; APS India runs the document verification and issues the APS certificate. The result doesn't flow between them automatically — your signature is the thing that authorises the handover. And for anyone in an affected field, APS India can only issue your APS certificate once the dMAT result has been submitted and checked against the information g.a.s.t. provides. So an unsigned or un-returned form doesn't cost you marks; it strands the result you just spent three hours earning.

Two practical points follow from that:

• Sign it when staff ask, and physically hand the signed form back. g.a.s.t. calls out returning the form as a separate step from signing it, which suggests forms do get left on desks.
• Don't treat it as optional small print. Nothing else in the exam-day process depends on a signature; this does.

Identity checks

You need your original official identification document on the day — and it has to be the same document you used when you registered online. For candidates in India, g.a.s.t. names the passport or the Aadhaar card; for candidates testing in Nepal, the passport or NID card. A photocopy or a digital image on your phone is not the original, and your phone is a prohibited item anyway.

Bring three things beyond the ID itself, because g.a.s.t. asks for them at different moments:

• Your participant number and exam ID — you may need these on entry, and you will need them during the exam.
• Your participant-portal login details — worth writing down rather than relying on a password manager you can't open, since your phone goes into storage before you sit down.
• Any extra documents your specific test centre has asked for. Centres can make their own requests by email, so check your inbox in the days before the exam rather than assuming the standard list is complete.

Test administrators can re-check your ID during the exam itself, not just at check-in. If there's any doubt about your identity, you're given one week after the exam to prove it, and your certificate is only issued once that's resolved.

What's banned

Nothing beyond your ID goes on your desk. Specifically prohibited for the entire exam:

• Mobile phones, tablets, MP3 players
• Wristwatches, including smartwatches and fitness trackers
• Calculators, rulers, or any other electronic device
• Any notes at all — g.a.s.t.'s terms explicitly call out that even blank scratch paper counts as a prohibited aid on the digital dMAT, and the candidate instructions separately prohibit taking notes or making recordings during the exam

If your phone rings during the exam, or you're caught trying to call or message anyone — during the test or even during the break — you're excluded outright. Everything you carry in gets left in a designated storage area or, if none exists, placed in a corner of the exam room.

One thing worth reading carefully: the general terms describe a warning-then-exclusion model for minor disruption (covered further down), but the candidate instructions for this sitting state that any breach of these prohibitions results in immediate exclusion. Those aren't easy to reconcile from the outside, and you don't want to be the test case. Treat the banned-items list as a hard line with no warning attached, and hand in anything you're unsure about before the check-in rather than carrying it to your desk.

The examination staff will explain the rules in full on the day, and they're also displayed on the examination portal at the start of the exam — so you get two chances to hear them, both of them after it's too late to walk something back out to your bag.

Getting there on time

For the 26 September 2026 sitting, g.a.s.t. confirmed the exact test-centre addresses and the times for identity checks and the exam start from 18 September 2026, published in the participant portal. That's the detail to go and read now if you're sitting this exam — the city you booked is not the same thing as the street address, and the identity-check time is earlier than the exam start.

More generally, test-day information appears in the participant portal roughly five days before the exam. If you arrive after the exam materials have already been handed out, you are not admitted — and g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions put it bluntly: late arrivals are refused even if they are only a few minutes late. Indian test centres are in ten different cities with very different traffic profiles, so build in margin for the journey rather than the schedule.

During the exam

You may use the restroom during a module — but the exam is not paused while you do, so the time comes straight out of your 90 minutes. g.a.s.t.'s own recommendation is to use the 30-minute break for this instead, which is sound advice: on a module where the time pressure is the main difficulty, a five-minute walk is a meaningful fraction of the paper.

Eating is not permitted during a module. Drinks are allowed into the examination room on one condition — the bottle must be transparent and unlabelled. That rules out the flask or the printed sports bottle most people would reach for, so decant into a plain clear bottle the night before rather than discovering the problem at check-in. Food, drinks and toiletries have to come out of your bag before the exam starts, and whether smoking breaks are allowed at all is up to the individual test center.

The 30-minute break. Snacks may be eaten during the break, and some test centres offer free refreshments — but you are not permitted to leave the test centre during it. Plan on the assumption that you cannot step out for food, which in practice means bringing something with you: there's a 90-minute module on the other side of that break and no further opportunity to eat.

The break also has its own timekeeping: the test center sets the start time for the second module, and you're required to be back for it. Expect your ID to be checked again after the break or after any room change, before seats are reassigned — so don't leave your passport at your seat when you step out. Any exam time you miss is simply lost; g.a.s.t.'s terms are explicit that it can't be made up at the end.

If you don't finish both modules

This is the rule most worth understanding before you sit down, because the consequence is much harsher than people assume. Under g.a.s.t.'s terms, failing to attend any part of the exam means the whole sitting is treated as aborted — not scored-as-is, and not partially credited. An aborted exam produces no dMAT certificate at all, and the fee isn't refunded.

The practical trap is the 30-minute break. The Core Module is deliberately hard and heavily time-pressured, and it's common to walk out of it feeling like it went badly. If you decide at that point to cut your losses and go home, you don't end up with a weak Core Module score on your certificate — you end up with no certificate. That distinction matters enormously, because a weak score is survivable and a missing certificate is not: APS India has stated it can only issue your APS certificate once the required dMAT certificate has been submitted and checked. A poor result still moves your application forward. An aborted exam stops it.

Two further points make finishing the stronger choice even on a bad day:

• A low score is not a pass/fail gate for APS purposes. APS India treats the dMAT as an additional element in your documentation rather than a cutoff you must clear — see how scoring actually works for what the certificate reports and what it doesn't.
• The fallback date is real but distant and still undated. g.a.s.t. does allow unlimited retakes, and states that the next sitting after 26 September 2026 is planned for the first quarter of 2027 — but it hasn't published the exact day, and you can't register for a date that doesn't exist yet. So abandoning this sitting doesn't cost you the test forever; it costs you roughly two quarters, a second €150 fee, and the certainty of knowing when your APS file can be completed. That's a steep price for avoiding a low score that wouldn't have blocked you anyway.

What to do if you genuinely can't sit the exam

Illness and personal emergencies don't create an exception here. g.a.s.t.'s terms state that being unable to use the service for personal reasons — illness, work, family obligations — doesn't entitle you to a refund or to a transfer to a later date. Not showing up is treated the same as abandoning the exam partway through.

That means the only meaningful decision point is before the registration deadline, not after it:

• Before the registration deadline — you can deregister through the dMAT participant portal and recover most of your fee, minus an administrative charge of up to 15%. This is the last point at which anything is recoverable.
• After the registration deadline — deregistration is no longer possible at all, and nothing is refundable whether you attend or not.

So if you're already fairly sure on, say, 12 September that you won't be able to travel to your test center, deregistering is worth acting on immediately rather than holding out hope; once the deadline passes, the choice disappears. Conversely, if you're merely under-prepared rather than genuinely unable to attend, sitting the exam and taking whatever score you get is almost always better than forfeiting both the fee and the certificate. The exam fee page has the full refund breakdown, and exam dates has the deadline you're measuring against.

One narrow exception does exist in the other direction: if the exam goes wrong through no fault of yours, g.a.s.t.'s terms do provide a remedy — the section below on what happens when something fails that isn't your fault covers which remedy applies to which kind of failure. That protection covers equipment and operational failures, not a sitting you chose to abandon.

What counts as a violation

g.a.s.t. uses a two-strike model for minor disruption: a first offense (talking, using a banned item, general disturbance) gets a warning; a repeat gets you excluded from the exam with no refund and no certificate. Some things skip the warning and go straight to exclusion — consulting notes or reference material during the break, or any evidence of using outside help during the test itself. If irregular conduct is discovered even after the fact, g.a.s.t.'s Examination Board can revoke an already-issued certificate and will inform the relevant German universities that it's been invalidated.

The third rung: being barred from future sittings

Most write-ups of exam rules stop at "you'll be thrown out," which understates the worst case. g.a.s.t.'s terms describe a separate, harsher tier for breaches of the dMAT's special conditions — the examples given are falsified identity documents, using a hand scanner, and attempting to take exam documents out of the room. A candidate who does one of these is excluded from that sitting and g.a.s.t. is entitled to refuse them admission to the dMAT in future. The decision rests with the Examination Board in Bochum, not with your test center, and the fee is kept either way.

Notice what separates this tier from the two-strike tier: everything on this list is deliberate deception rather than carelessness or nerves. Forgetting to hand in a fitness tracker is a warning-level problem; presenting an ID that isn't yours is not. The distinction is worth internalising precisely because the consequence isn't symmetrical with the mistake — for an applicant in an affected field, a future ban isn't just a lost €150. APS India can only issue your APS certificate once a dMAT certificate has been submitted and checked, so being permanently shut out of the test closes the APS route for that degree field entirely, with no appeal path published anywhere that would restore it.

The practical implication is narrow but absolute: never let someone else's convenience — an agent offering to "handle" your registration under different details, a friend suggesting you photograph a question — put you on this rung. There is no version of that trade that pays off.

If something goes wrong that isn't your fault

Two different failure modes sit in g.a.s.t.'s terms, and they carry different remedies — which is worth knowing before you're the person it happens to, because the one you'd most want is the narrower of the two.

• A technical defect on g.a.s.t.'s side. If part of your exam can't be evaluated because of a technical fault caused by g.a.s.t., you're notified and you have the right to retake the digital dMAT at one of the next exam dates. This is the strong protection: a concrete entitlement, not a discretionary favour.
• A disruption outside g.a.s.t.'s control. For anything beyond its sphere of influence — the terms give no exhaustive list, but this is the force-majeure category — g.a.s.t. states it can't be held responsible, commits to resuming normal operations as soon as possible, and limits its responsibility to refunding the exam fee or, in justified cases, offering to repeat the test later. A repeat here is something g.a.s.t. may offer, not something you can demand.

The gap between those two is the reason it's worth distinguishing them. A machine that fails mid-module gets you a retake by right; a wider disruption at your center may get you your money back and a later sitting only if g.a.s.t. judges the case justified. And since the next India sitting is only planned for the first quarter of 2027, without a confirmed date, "a later sitting" is not yet something you can plan a university deadline around — even when the retake is yours by right.

None of this is within your control, so there's no preparation that changes the outcome — but two things are worth doing anyway. Report a problem to the test center while you're still in the room rather than after you've left, so it's on record as a test-day incident. And if you believe the center itself handled something badly, that's the five-working-day written complaint to the Examination Board described below, which is a separate channel from disputing your score.

You can't discuss or share exam content afterward

This one surprises people: g.a.s.t.'s terms explicitly prohibit recording any information about what was on the dMAT, discussing it with other test-takers, passing it to third parties, or posting it on social media, forums or any other site — and state that breaches will be brought to legal prosecution. Practically, this is also why no genuine "leaked" dMAT question bank exists anywhere, and why any third-party site claiming to sell real past papers should be treated with suspicion rather than trust.

After the exam

If you think you were treated unfairly by the test center, you have five working days to file a written complaint with g.a.s.t.'s Examination Board. Separately, you can also dispute your actual score — see the dMAT FAQ for that process, which has its own four-week window and its own fee.

You're also allowed to inspect your own exam paper on request, once results are released — up to 30 minutes, with no recording and no electronic devices allowed during the inspection. This is separate from a score review; inspecting your paper doesn't itself change your result.

Don't wait for your result to start your APS file

The revised candidate sheet ends on a point that has nothing to do with the exam room, and it's the most consequential thing on it: APS India recommends registering on the APS portal and submitting your APS documents as early as possible — not after your dMAT result arrives.

The reason that matters is arithmetic. You sit the exam on 26 September; g.a.s.t. releases results and certificates on 12 October. If you treat the certificate as the starting gun for your APS application, you've added a fortnight of dead time to a verification process that already runs on no published timeline. g.a.s.t. states that if your APS file is otherwise complete, APS India may be able to begin verifying your documents while you're still waiting for the dMAT result — and once the certificate is released, you add it to that existing file rather than opening a new one. For anyone working against a university deadline, that overlap is the whole point.

The condition attached to it

This is not permission to send a half-finished file and top it up later. g.a.s.t. is explicit that the option applies to the dMAT certificate only. Everything else on the applicable APS checklist has to be there at the start, and additional or updated academic records cannot be submitted later alongside the dMAT certificate for the same APS procedure.

So the rule splits cleanly:

• A dMAT certificate you don't have yet — fine, send everything else now and supply it in October.
• A marksheet, transcript or degree certificate you don't have yet — not fine. APS India will not hold an application open waiting for a pending academic result, and you can't add it later under the dMAT exception. If your final-semester results are still outstanding, submitting early doesn't buy you the head start; it risks an evaluation based on an incomplete academic record.

That second branch is the one that catches people out, because the two situations feel identical from the applicant's side — both are "a document I'm waiting on." They're treated completely differently, and only one of them has a concession attached.

What to do between the exam and your result

If you sat the exam on 26 September and haven't started your APS application yet, the useful thing to do now is not to replay the paper — it's to check whether your academic documents are complete against the current APS checklist, and if they are, start the portal registration rather than waiting until 12 October. The APS certificate guide covers what goes in that document package and the file-handling rules for the certificate you eventually receive; how the dMAT fits into your APS application covers the sequencing against a university deadline; and exam dates has the results date you're planning around.

None of this is meant to be intimidating — it's the same standardized-testing playbook used for exams like TOEFL or GRE. Knowing it in advance just means nothing on test day is a surprise. For what's actually tested once you're in your seat, see the syllabus breakdown; for registration, see registration; for exact dates and the exam fee, see exam dates and the exam fee page.

Do I have to sign anything on dMAT exam day?

Yes. g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions for the 26 September 2026 sitting require you to sign a Declaration of Consent so your result can be transferred to APS India in New Delhi. Sign it when the examination staff ask, and make sure you hand the signed form back — without your consent, g.a.s.t. states it cannot pass your result to APS.

Can I use an Aadhaar card as ID for the dMAT?

Yes. For candidates in India, g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions name the passport or the Aadhaar card as the accepted original identification document (for Nepal, passport or NID card). It must be the same document you registered with, and it must be the original.

Can I go to the toilet during the dMAT exam?

Yes, you may use the restroom during a module — but the exam clock is not paused, so the time comes out of your 90 minutes. g.a.s.t. recommends using the 30-minute break instead.

Can I take a water bottle into the dMAT exam?

Yes, if it's transparent and unlabelled. g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions allow drinks into the examination room on that condition. Eating is not permitted during a module, but you can have snacks in the break.

Can I leave the test centre during the dMAT break?

No. g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions state you are not permitted to leave the test centre during the 30-minute break. Snacks may be eaten during the break, and some test centres offer free refreshments.

What happens if I'm late to my dMAT exam?

You are not admitted. If you arrive after the exam materials have already been handed out, there's no late start — g.a.s.t. states late arrivals are refused even if only a few minutes late. Center location and meeting time show up in your participant portal about five days before the exam, so plan to arrive with margin.

What ID do I need to bring to the dMAT?

Your original passport or Aadhaar card (passport or NID card in Nepal) — and it has to be the same document you used when you registered online. Test administrators can re-check your ID during the exam itself, not just at check-in.

Can I bring scratch paper to work out dMAT questions?

No. g.a.s.t.'s terms explicitly state that even blank scratch paper counts as a prohibited aid on the digital dMAT — nothing beyond your ID goes on your desk.

What happens if I break a rule during the dMAT?

g.a.s.t. uses a two-strike model for minor disruption — a first offense gets a warning, a repeat gets you excluded with no refund and no certificate. Some things, like consulting notes or using outside help, skip the warning and go straight to exclusion.

Can I be banned from taking the dMAT in future?

Yes, for serious breaches. g.a.s.t.'s dMAT terms name falsified identity documents, hand scanners and attempting to remove exam documents as violations that get you excluded from the sitting and entitle g.a.s.t. to refuse you admission to the dMAT in future, with the decision resting with its Examination Board. Ordinary exam-room mistakes fall under the warning-then-exclusion rule instead, not this one.

Can I discuss or share dMAT questions after the exam?

No. g.a.s.t.'s terms explicitly prohibit recording any information about exam content, discussing it with other test-takers, or posting it anywhere online — and state that breaches will be brought to legal prosecution.

Can I see my own exam paper after the test?

Yes, on request, once results are released. You get up to 30 minutes to inspect it, but you can't record or take away any information, and no electronic devices are allowed during the inspection.

What happens if I leave the dMAT exam early?

Missing any part of the exam makes the whole sitting count as aborted under g.a.s.t.'s terms — not just a lower score. You get no dMAT certificate and no refund, so walking out at the break after a bad Core Module costs you the entire exam.

What if I'm sick on dMAT exam day?

g.a.s.t.'s terms state that being unable to attend for personal reasons such as illness doesn't entitle you to a refund or a transfer to another test date. The only window for recovering most of your fee is deregistering through the participant portal before the registration deadline.

What should I do after the dMAT exam?

Don't wait for your result to start your APS file. g.a.s.t.'s candidate instructions state that APS India recommends registering on the APS portal and submitting your APS documents as early as possible — if the file is otherwise complete, APS India may begin verifying it while your dMAT result is still pending. You then add the dMAT certificate to that existing file once g.a.s.t. releases it on 12 October 2026.