## Count from the session, not from your exam

This is the single most useful correction to make to your expectations. Counting six weeks from
the morning you sat the exam will have you refreshing the results page long before anything is
published.

The window starts when the session closes worldwide and all papers have physically reached Lisbon.
Your own exam date is just one point inside that window.

## Three things that follow from this

- **Six weeks is the ceiling, not the promise.** Results sometimes appear sooner.
- **Everyone in a session gets results at the same time.** If someone who sat the exam elsewhere
  has their result and you do not, you are looking at the wrong page, not waiting longer.
- **Nobody tells you.** CAPLE publishes to its website. There is no email, no text message and no
  notification from your centre. Checking is entirely on you.

## Budget three months, not six weeks

Results are only the first step. After they are published, the certificate is issued and shipped
to your centre, which takes roughly 21 working days, and then you collect it in person.

From exam day to holding the document, plan for about three months. If you have a citizenship
deadline, work backwards from it and leave margin, because none of these stages has a hard
guarantee attached.

## What to do when the result appears

Use the print button on the results page and save it as a PDF the same day. That view shows the
partial percentages per language activity, not just the headline classification, and it is the
only record you get before the certificate arrives.

Those partial percentages are also the only diagnostic CAPLE will ever give you, so if a resit is
on the table, they are what you plan it around.