At the end of every semester or year, students all across the country come together to take final exams. This wraps up their classes and gives them their final grades, which will appear on their transcript.
Finals can range from a 200 question test, to an essay, to a project, but no matter the form, a final’s main goal is to test the knowledge of students. It focuses on memorization to see if students can somehow remember everything they learned in the entire class.
How do students feel about finals?
I conducted a survey open to any student in Woodbridge township. With 55 responses, it is clear that students feel relatively the same about final exams.
When asked on a scale of one to ten how stressed finals make them, one being not stressed at all and ten being extremely stressed, 41.8% answered ten- the highest answer from the scale. To add, 96.4% of students said that they do not believe finals are necessary for students to learn and grow, while only 1.8% said yes.
When given the option to share their thoughts on finals further, all said that finals caused them more stress. They also noted that they feel all the hard work done during the semester may go to waste if they don’t do well on the final exam. Finals are worth twenty percent of their grade.
Personal Thoughts
It is clear that final exams cause more stress to students rather than actually help them learn. As a student myself, I can say that I’ve never benefited from finals. There have been several times where I have taken a final and the grade I got was slightly lower than my average in the class. Therefore, my entire average dropped.
As a student who isn’t the best test taker either, it’s unfair that all the hard work I put in throughout the semester to make sure I keep a high average gets overwritten by one simple test score.
The only benefit to having finals in high school is that it prepares students for college, as finals are mandatory there. However, I believe that finals across all grade levels are pointless and truly add nothing to a student’s education.
