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.

Identity checks

You need a valid ID card or passport on the day — 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. 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 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

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.

Getting there on time

Center location, meeting time and exam-day logistics show up in your participant portal about five days before the exam. If you arrive after the exam materials have already been handed out, you are not admitted — there's no late start.

During the exam

Once you're seated, you can't leave the room until that module ends, except to use the lavatory during the scheduled break (with supervision if it's on another floor). Food, drinks and toiletries have to come out of your bag before the exam starts — you can't step out to the cafeteria, and there's no eating once you're seated. Whether smoking breaks are allowed at all is up to the individual test center.

The break between the two modules 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.
• There's no announced fallback date. The published g.a.s.t. schedule for India covers the 26 September 2026 sitting only; no second India test date has been announced. Treating this sitting as a throwaway attempt assumes a next one whose date doesn't yet exist.

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. Since no second India test date has been published, "a later sitting" is not currently a date you can plan around.

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.

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.

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 — 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?

A valid ID card or passport — 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.