Dua for Exam Success and Studying
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These are the supplications Muslims say before studying and before an exam: for clarity of speech, for retention, for ease in a hard task, and for contentment with a result once it is out of your hands.
Learn two of them rather than all six. The ones you can say from memory at the door of an exam hall are the ones that will be of use.
Before Studying
O Allah, there is no ease except what You make easy, and You make difficulty easy if You will. Narrated by Ibn Hibban.
This is the one most worth memorising, and not only for exams. It is short enough to say while opening a book.
For Retention
Read the Quran's own request: My Lord, increase me in knowledge. It is the only place in the Quran where the Prophet is commanded to ask for an increase in anything.
The Prophet also taught: O Allah, benefit me by what You have taught me, teach me what benefits me, and increase me in knowledge. Narrated by al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah.
Before Entering
Musa's supplication, which is the closest thing in the Quran to what a person feels walking into an examination:
My Lord, expand for me my chest, and ease for me my task, and untie the knot from my tongue so that they may understand my speech.
He said it before facing Pharaoh. It asks for three things in order: composure, ease, and the ability to say what you know. That is the whole of an exam.
When You Go Blank
O Ever-Living, O Sustainer, by Your mercy I seek help. Two seconds, and it is the supplication the Prophet taught for moments of distress.
Afterwards
The supplication for contentment with the decree: O Allah, make me content with what You have decreed for me, and bless me in it.
And when a result is not what you wanted, the Prophet's instruction covers it exactly: if something befalls you, do not say if only I had done such and such — say Allah decreed, and what He willed He did. In Muslim. He gives the reason: if only opens the work of shaytan.
The Part Supplication Does Not Replace
This has to be said on a page like this one. The Prophet tied the camel and then trusted — the narration where a man asks whether to tie his camel or rely on Allah, and is told to tie it and rely on Allah, is the frame for every dua on this page.
Supplication before an exam you did not study for is asking for a different outcome than the one you prepared. The reports treat effort and reliance as a pair, and the pair does not work with one half missing.
Practically: sleep before the exam rather than after it, since memory consolidates in sleep and no supplication was narrated to replace that either. Eat something. Arrive early. Then say Musa's supplication at the door and go in.
For Parents
If you are supplicating for a child in exams, the strongest position you hold is the one the reports single out: the supplication of a parent for their child is among those that are not rejected, narrated by Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi.
Use it for what matters. A child who does well and learns nothing about their own capacity has gained less than one who struggled and found out what they can carry.