By Patrick Dobyns, Editor
It’s come to our attention that there’s some confusion regarding the final exam schedule. After looking at it myself, I can see why: it’s not exactly intuitive, and the set up is very different from previous years. Because of this, we decided it would be a good idea to make a step-by-step guide to reading the schedule and getting a concrete idea of when your finals are.
The first thing to note is that the schedule is divided into parts based on what days the exams are — starting on May 5, and going over the following three days, the dates of the exams are organized roughly by the day of the week classes are held. For example, if your class only meets on Mondays, your class meeting for the final exam will be on Monday, May 5. After that, the exam time will be determined by what time your class begins.
Of course, many classes are held over multiple days. This will be represented by the letters corresponding to the days being combined on the schedule: classes meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays will be represented by a “TR”, classes meeting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays by a “MWF”, etc. These classes will all be held on one of those days, for example, “TR” classes will only test on Tuesday or Thursday. The easiest way to find these exam times is to find when your class starts and see if the day your classes are held matches what’s given on the schedule.
As an example, I’ll go ahead and say that I’ve got a class meeting on Tuesday and Thursday at 2 p.m. I don’t have to look at the first or third parts of the schedule, because those are for classes meeting Monday and Wednesday. Going to the second part of the schedule, I go down the times until I reach “1:30 p.m. – 2:59 p.m.”, since my class meets within that timeframe. Going to the right I only see a single “T” (denoting classes that meet only on Tuesdays), so my class won’t be having an exam that day.
I do the same thing for Thursday on the last part of the schedule, and see the “TR”, which means my class will have the exam that day, as my class meets on both of those days. From there, I go left and see the exam time is 2 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. This would also be the same for any class that starts between 1:30 and 2:59.
As with any meticulously crafted schedule, there are a few exceptions where things just don’t fit nicely. Laboratory exams will simply be held during the last lab period of the semester. Classes that meet only on Fridays and Saturdays will meet the week before exam week, on May 2 or 3. Applied Music, Nursing, and Certification exams will be arranged by their respective departments, and Math Corequisite courses will have their exams on the day of their corresponding college-level exam. Be sure to ask your professor whether your class will follow the general schedule, as there are edge cases where exams do not fall on the provided dates.
I’ve heard from a few folks that this year’s exam schedule wasn’t as easy to read as previous years, so I wanted to help make things easier for everyone. I hope this helps, and good luck to all on your finals!
