Students with an evening exam followed by a morning exam the next day will now qualify for rescheduling

Students who have a final exam at night followed by an exam the next morning will now be able to reschedule their morning exam for the afternoon, according to the Office of the Registrar’s website.

"Students who have an in-class night exam (7:30 p.m.) followed by an in-class morning exam (9:00 a.m.) the next day may request that the morning exam be rescheduled to the afternoon (1:30 p.m.) of the same day," the policy reads.

The change is the result of efforts from the USG Academics Committee, whose chair Dillon Sharp ’14 presented a series of recommendations for the final exam period to the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing on Oct. 4. The change to the overcrowding policy was announcedon the Registrar’s website last Friday after Sharp met with University Registrar Polly Griffin.

“The request by Dillon on behalf of the USG was a reasonable request and well-received in the Committee on Examinations and Standing,” Griffin, who also sits on the committee, said.

Griffin explained that the timing “just worked out” for this proposed policy change because the committee received the recommendation for the expanded definition of overcrowding as the Office of the Registrar was in the process of creating the final exam schedule.

“The committee said, ‘Why not, if there’s room in the schedule for that?’ and that was sort of the end of the discussion,” Senior Associate Dean of the College and secretary of the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing Claire Fowler said. “It was a very easy fix.”

The final exam overcrowding policy previously only allowed students to submit a request to reschedule a final exam if they had two scheduled on the same day. If the request was granted, one exam would be moved to the next day.

“The proposal was to modify that overcrowding policy to include a night exam followed by a morning exam,” Sharp said, “because, as you can imagine, that situation would be even more stressful than two exams on the same day because not only do you not have a lot of time to study between exams, but that time that you have you’re also supposed to be sleeping.”

The new policy gives students with a night exam followed by a morning exam the chance to sleep and study the next morning. By only pushing the morning exam to later in the day, Sharp said the “domino effect” of conflicts with other final exams would also be avoided.

According to Griffin, 28 students are scheduled to have a night exam followed by a morning exam during the upcoming final exam period. In total, 61 students have exams that fall under the entire overcrowding policy.

“I would think, in particular, those 28 students —whom we will email to tell them of the change to the overcrowding definition —they’ll be thrilled,” Griffin said, noting that it’s difficult to have two exams in a row.

Griffin could not say how many students have been previously affected by having one exam at night and another exam in the morning because her office did not look at that number before this semester.

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“I’m extremely happy,” Sharp said. “It’s rare that such a significant change can have such a quick turnaround, but I’m extremely excited that it’s going to become pushed for this semester’s exams.”