Final exams - Gather Information

• The Final Exam Schedule is posted near the beginning of each term. On Add Date (fifth week), once your schedule is settled, check the schedule and record each exam date, time, and location in your planner. Check again on Drop Date (tenth week) and in the last week of classes to make sure that none of your testing dates, times, or locations have changed. Sometimes changes are made later in the term, even just before Finals Week.
• The Registrar's Office will contact you if you have a scheduling conflict between two or more final exams.
• The Faculty have agreed on rules to ensure that student workloads are manageable prior to and during the final exam period. These Faculty term regulations specify when and how finals can be given, when final assignments are due, testing in subjects without finals, and more. They are publicized each term, but instructors occasionally overlook them. At the beginning of the term, check your syllabi against the regulations; ask the instructor if you see an apparent violation. You can also address questions or report violations to exam-termregs@mit.edu. Doing this early in the term prevents last-minute crises for all concerned.
• Gather all of your notes, handouts, texts, assignments, and tests for each subject and sort them into chronological order so they will be easy to find again. Check your gathered material against the syllabus. Do you have all of the important information? Are you missing notes for any lectures? Do you have all of the assignments and tests back that you should? All of your textbooks? Will the final exam cover the entire term's material or some subset? This is the first step in planning your study time.