If you feel overwhelmed by your finals being scheduled too close together, you may have the opportunity to reschedule. Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash.
It’s that time of year again: Final exam schedules have come out, and students are either preparing themselves to face finals week or are in complete denial.
Fortunately, there are some ways to make finals week a little less miserable, such as rescheduling bunched finals, according to the Dean of Students website.
Bunched finals include two or more final exams scheduled for the same time block, four exams in two days (for example, two exams one day and two exams the next), three finals in one calendar day or three consecutive finals, such as two back-to-back exams in the last two time blocks of one day and one exam in the first time block of the next.
To check final exam schedules, students can go to StudentAdmin and in the “Academics” tab, select “Final Exam Schedule” in the “other academics…” drop-down box. Selecting “Weekly Calendar View” for the week of Dec. 9 to Dec. 15 will make it easiest to see if any finals are bunched.
Students can also find their final exam times and locations on the master list on the Office of the Registrar’s website. As this document is 91 pages long, the best way to find an exam here is by pressing the keys CTRL+f and typing in the course code (e.g., CHEM 1127Q), then looking for the appropriate section of the course.
The five official time blocks per day for final exams are 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., in two-hour increments with half an hour in-between exams, per the Dean of Students website.
According to the iCenter, students can reschedule bunched finals by coming to the iCenter desk in the Wilbur Cross Building and filling out one of the blue forms, then discussing specific scheduling with an iCenter employee. For example, in the case of three consecutive exams, the middle one will be rescheduled.
“Students fill out the blue form, which we send to the Dean of Students Office, then [the DOS] emails the student, and the student has to email their professor in order to reschedule the exam,” an iCenter student employee said.
Final exams can also be rescheduled for a few other reasons, including immediate illness, in which case students must receive permission for a reschedule from Student Health Services, as stated on the Dean of Students website. Also, if students have transportation issues with getting to an exam on the weekend, they can discuss this with the Dean of Students, as explained by an iCenter employee.
Final exam reschedule requests must be made before Nov. 22.
According to one UConn student, finals are stressful enough without having a bunch of them back to back.
“It’s like trying to run a triathlon, running from chemistry to biology to statistics and having to change my mindset in the 15 minutes between,” said third-semester physiology and neurobiology and sociology double major Sabaa Fayazi.
If students have any questions about rescheduling bunched finals, they can email the Office of the Registrar at registrar@uconn.edu, or go to the iCenter desk in the Wilbur Cross Building anytime Monday through Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M (https://icenter.uconn.edu/finals/).
Keely Greiner is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at keely.greiner@uconn.edu.
