Word: exam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week at a meeting of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), Harvard Registrar Georgene B. Herschbach presented a proposal which called for reducing spring and fall final exam periods from nine to eight days. The proposal is apparently designed to solve two problems with the current exam schedule...
...begin with, the spring exam period typically ends on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, which "causes all sorts of problems," according to Herschbach. Additionally, an average of 20 students a semester submit requests to reschedule their Saturday exams due to religious conflicts. An added benefit of shorter exam periods would be one more day of precious intersession...
...leery, however, of potential problems. The most serious side effect of trimming down final exam periods would be that more students would have to deal with two or even three exams on a single day (known in registrar parlance as doubles and triples). Any students knows that having three finals in one day can be seriously hazardous to one's grade point average. Supervisor of Examinations Thomas Lynch is aware of this problem, and believes that computer optimization can minimize the number of additional doubles and triples necessary. He also mentioned that conflicts could be avoided by designating more classes...
...agree with Marco B. Simons '97, a CUE member and the chair of the Student Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Council, who adroitly pointed out that many students would be inconvenienced by an increased number of classes with uncertain final exam dates...
...urge the CUE to seriously consider this option before they decide to hack an already crammed exam period down to eight days...