Finally!

At the beginning of a semester, the farthest thought from most students’ mind is finals week. That does not mean, however, that the administration should wait until students start cramming for exams to let them know when their finals will take place. Concerns about getting home for winter break often arise early on in the semester, when students are incapable of doing anything more than guessing their finals schedules based what their professor says and whether they are required to take an exam or write a paper. Final schedules have traditionally been released around midterms, giving students a little more than a month to make travel plans. This is an inconvenience, as fares rise quickly and flights fill up for the holidays as the semester progresses. The administration should complete and release the official finals schedule earlier in the semester.

The University usually releases its finals schedule right after midterms. However, most lecture classes are given a “tentative” final exam date—which in many cases remain unchanged—at the beginning of the year. The University has a formula for determining when finals will be given based on when a lecture class meets. A course that meets on Mondays and Wednesdays in the morning will be scheduled for a 9 a.m. final on the day the course is usually offered. Core and language classes are the exceptions to this rule—each Core course or language is assigned a day when students across sections take the exam. A projected schedule is available for students at the beginning of the year; however, many students are afraid to make travel plans because they worry that the schedule will change. The administration should make these dates permanent by the beginning of October, giving students as much time as possible to figure out the cheapest and easiest way home.

The administration needs to make the schedule as soon as possible, to ensure both that students can work out conflicts and that they can resolve exam conflicts as soon as possible. The administration must remember that finals week, being the last week of the semester, involves much more planning than just around academics. The last thing any student wants to be worrying about close to finals is how he or she is going to get home afterward, so those constructing the finals schedule should allow them more preparation time than just the latter half of the semester.