Midterms are widely regarded among students as one of the most stressful periods of the school year. Normal exams are difficult, but back-to-back tests on everything covered in a particular course over a semester that determines 15% of your grade can be exponentially more demanding.
In the past, KO has set midterms in a three-day period, usually resulting in students having one exam a day, with ample time to go home, rest, and get in some last-minute studying for the next test. This year, however, KO has opted for a two-day schedule—a decision that has garnered frustration among the student body. This two-day schedule crams the same number of exams into a smaller period of time, meaning most students now face two exams a day. Although not every student will be studying for two exams a day, students in more challenging courses will be swamped with an increased workload.
Despite the fact that some students think this “new” exam schedule was created with the new schedule, the midterm change is actually a return to old times at KO; five or 10 years ago, KO had the same two-day midterms. However, the two-day exams were implemented in an attempt to accommodate the new schedule, so all classes got the chance to review a couple of days before the midterms. English teacher and former Head of the Upper School Dan Gleason thought this schedule allowed for a more authentic fit with the reinvented calendar. “We knew with the way the new schedule works, if we only had one day that week, then half of our classes would get sort of an additional review day before exams, but if we could have two days of classes, we knew that every class would meet at least once,” Dr. Gleason said.
Additionally, the new exam schedule helps students to understand what college exams could be like. “I think it is pretty common to have two in a day,” Dr. Gleason said. “They’re short enough where it is mentally manageable. Yes, moving to two in a day is a transition, and transitions can always be hard. I think having the chance to check in with every class beforehand and still keeping the buffer day for snow days is a good idea.”
The exams will reportedly be the same length as they’ve always been—an hour and a half, plus the 15-minute review time at the end. Teachers adjust the exams so they can fit in the time frame. According to the National Library of Medicine, scientists studied the most effective examination conditions that would provide students with the highest scores. “We showed that lengthier exams led to better performance on assessment items shared between conditions,” Dr. Jensen, Dr. Barry, and Dr. Kummer wrote. “It also led to greater performance on the final exam, lending support to the testing effect in creative problem-solving. Lengthier exams did not result in lower performance due to fatiguing conditions, although students perceived subjective fatigue.”
Therefore, having two examinations in a day may actually help students and increase their grades on each respective exam. However, stress from exams may still affect student’s well-being. Having two exams in a day is bound to make students more stressed and may hinder their ability to perform at a high level in exams.
A positive factor about the new exam schedule is that midterms stay on the same week, that is, one week before winter break. According to science teacher Kathleen DiSanto, students had to take midterms after winter break in past years at KO. This former schedule meant that students had to study over winter break, meaning they had an increased stress level over a break meant to alleviate that pressure. However, there are still many ways that the schedule change could be improved. Although the faculty seems to believe that the new two-day schedule will be genuinely helpful, this issue still exemplifies a wider communication issue between faculty and students. When the new schedule was released to students, there was an all-school assembly to show how the schedule would work and offer some advantages and disadvantages of having a new refined agenda. However, when it came to the exam schedule, the same clear instructions and explanations were nowhere to be found when it came to the exam schedule. None of the reasoning for a shorter exam time frame has been made clear to students, nor has the concept of two-day exams been shared in an accessible way to the KO community. Some students around the school weren’t even aware of the change in schedule as late as early December, with much of the information about the two-day midterms passed through the student body via word of mouth.
As of now, Dr. Gleason is not sure if the school will continue to implement the two-day schedule for finals. Students will be able to experience the two-day schedule and provide feedback in time for finals, which will hopefully be more beneficial to the student body.
