Where to stay?

Since it's a two-full-day exam, you're going to need to stay at least two nights in a hotel in the area, unless you've got a friend living there willing to put you up.  And perhaps even if you do, you'd want to stay in a hotel, because you probably don't want to have to worry about traffic, parking etc. when you've probably got better things to worry about, like if you're remembering stuff right.  You might even want to show up earlier, since you really don't want to spend the day before the exams dealing with travelling/connection issues, especially if there are problems.  

And, the idea of just walking out of your hotel room, taking the lift down, and then strolling in to the testing centre right at your hotel, and then going straight back to your hotel room right after, is a very seductive one.  

But: it's made pretty much impossible by how you can't actually know what your testing centre is until well after the time period when it's realistically possible to make a hotel booking.  There are so many people taking the bar exams that you ought to, the minute you decide you ARE taking the bar exams, book a hotel room.  If you leave it to anywhere near the application deadlines, for example, I do not believe you will find a room at any of the main hotels.  And you want to be at a main hotel because that's pretty much where the exams would be held.  Which, however, won't be an advantage if the hotel you're staying in is not the/near the testing centre you're assigned to, but you have to travel to a different hotel to take your exam (while other people at that hotel are travelling to yours for their exam).  

Which is what happened to me.  

I booked a room at the Crowne Plaza Albany hotel.  This has the advantage of being right smack in the Albany city centre, and in walking distance to the nearby Times Union Centre where the bulk of the test takers would be taking their exams.  Except that I, having signed up to use a laptop for the exam, did not know (this may change, but was true when I took the exams - be sure to check the test site information page) that if you're using a laptop, you're going to be assigned to somewhere else.  In my case specifically, the airport Marriott.  So I found myself trying to make my way north (while people staying at the Marriott were making their way south).  This is not as easy as it may appear.  For one thing, the cab drivers find it greatly difficult to resist cashing in on this great shoal of generally-quite-desperate-to-get-there-on-time fish.  I was told one cab charged his cab full of Japanese test-takers $50 to get them there.  By $50, I mean $50 each.  

When I got to my test venue, I discovered something that is the basis of my next Golden Rule: the hotel had arranged multiple buses ($15 per person per day to get there and back) to shuttle their test takers down to Times Union.  

So my proposed Golden Rule is this: book a room in a large hotel (where there'll be other test-takers) somewhere outside the city centre (I'd have chosen the Marriott; no, I don't have any shares), unless you're certain you'll end up taking your test at Times Union.  Because it makes sense for the hotels "on the outside" to organise shuttled buses to the town centre, but there's not enough people "on the inside" heading out for the hotels inside to organise buses out likewise.  You may have a lower chance of "lucking out" and getting yourself into the same hotel you'll be taking the test in, but your chances of not having to make your own way to your test site are reduced (and if you still have to do so, then you're not really any worse off than you would have been otherwise?).