UCL Union

Now they've finally arrived, how is your exam timetable looking? If it seems like a real nightmare, let us know here (include as many details as you can) so we can get an idea of how big the problem is and take it forward on your behalf...

2nd year psychology compulsory exams are on 2 consecutive days 8th/9th May, and then on 3 consecutive days 14th/15th/16th May!! Could they not have been spaced out a little better!?!

2nd year theoretical physics, we have three separate days with two exams on each day and then after this last "double day" another exam on the following day. Even consecutive days would be better than so many doubles.

2nd year speech science are on the 26th, 27th and 30th April so they start the first week back! I stringly believe this will affect peoples grades. Not good!

how can psychology 3rd year final exams be as follows: 26th april, 27th april, 30th april, 1st may, 2nd may, 18th may - ?!?!?!?!!! if anything, there shouldn't even be any in april and there's so much time to space the exams out rather than have them all on top of each other -- i make the point again that WE ARE NOT ROBOTS or whatever it is they think we are n they can't go around blaming everything on portico cos if the system was not sufficient to produce a proper exam timetable then it shouldn't have even been in use -- they should have just been doing things the standard way til they knew for sure that the portico thing was fully apt. i think they need to start focussing attention on the welfare and stress levels of students rather than on what's convenient for them.

1st year human sciences exam timetable (all courses are compulsory): 27th of april biochemistry, 30th statistics, 1st of may both physiology AND psychology, 2nd anatomy, 3rd genetics, 8th geography, 16th anthropology... don't tell me this doesn't suck... :S

2nd year French with film: 2 on the 30th April, 1 on the first of May and one on the 18th May (those are all French department units). The depatemtn have said that they understand our grievances and are trying to do what they can.....

2nd Year Physics's timetable is terrible, we have "2 exams" on the 26th, then "2" again on the 11th, and we finished off with one on 14th and 15th, we end up with both DOUBLE and CONSECUTIVE days! Additionally, on one of the double days, the exam halls are very far apart and we only get 2 hours for lunch and travel! Everyone in the whole Physics and Astronomy department has timetables like this and are very annoyed with it, isn't there anything the union can do? Or are they just waiting for students to take drastic actions?

Seriously who dreams this crazy stuff up ??-- they have really done a number on the third and second years again!!! 3rd year psych finals 26, 27, 30 of april then all the rest of mine over by the 16 of may ??!!! Do they have any idea what they are asking?? I think not --- plus the late timetable handout --- what a great slap in the face and end to my time at UCL - bitter about having to pay for all of that ??? never --- Hacked off 3rd year

greek and latin exams suck - 1st exam on 30th april.. last exam on 30th may. can you expect someone to remain focussed for that length of time!

3rd year Chemistry - I have exams on 27/4, 3/5, 4/5, 9/5, 10/5. It is ridiculous that all my exams are crammed in to less than two weeks. There is so little time to revise in between. Three of these exams are core courses taken by all 3rd years so quite why they have decided to put them all so close together I don't know. Very annoyed and feel this may well affect my performance in these exams.

1st year Bsc Maths timetable much terrible. starts on 26/4 (idiotic applied) and then from 1/2/3/4 of may. OMFG we have 4 consequtive days and all are in different venues. HATE UCLLLLLLLLLLLL MATHSSSSSSSSSSS DEPT
Nathen

The life science students start exams in April (which does not give us sufficient time to revise properly) and we have 4 exams on consequtive days, and have it all finished around the 11th of May.

Dear all,

First of all, thanks to everyone who has got in touch regarding their exam timetables and apologies for the slight delay in reply, but I thought it best to give you all a reasonable chance - I'll be compiling the responses in due course to give a broader perspective on the problem .

Needless to say, many of you are unhappy with the scheduling of your exams this year. The latest news from the exam registry this afternoon is that, unless you've heard otherwise (the only example I know of are cases in which travel between exam locations was impossible), your exams will be held on the given dates in the given locations and no further alterations will be made.

If you think your timetable constitutes extenuating circumstances (including if travel between locations is going to be very difficult), please get in touch with your personal tutor as soon as possible as there are formal procedures and forms which need to be gone through in order to apply for them to be taken into consideration.

It's also worth bearing mind that the exam board tend to consider extenuating circumstances as they apply to individuals - they may decide that if the entire membership of a course has the same timetable (core units, for instance) then they are all at the same level of disadvantage and therefore it's not extenuating - but equally if, for instance, you're on a multiple honours course, you may have a series of other exams before one that others have a clear run up to, then this is more likely to be considered as extenuating. Obviously these rules are not hard and fast, but hopefully they give you some idea of how the system has worked in the past.

Some students have said that their departments have extended coursework and essay deadlines to help ease the workload - it may be worth finding out or suggesting to your department if this might be possible.

With regards to what can be done, as some of you have quite reasonably asked, the answer is, unfortunately, not a great deal it seems. The problem has obviously been exacerbated by the lateness of the timetables' arrivals. As I've said above, the college have said that exams will take place as timetabled. Our only advice is to make the best of the time you have and to apply for extenuating circumstances if you think it appropriate. I realise that this isn't overwhelmingly helpful and I'm extremely sorry and frustrated that we haven't had more opportunity to do more to ease what is easily one of the most stressful experiences going. For what it's worth to you all now, once we have all the facts to hand the other Union officers and I will be raising this at the highest possible levels to find out why this has happened and, most most importantly, make sure incidents like this, and the problems with Portico registration at the beginning of the year, don't happen again. My personal hope would be the establishment of an exam scheduling 'good practice' guide, which would give everyone a more realistic picture of what is appropriate to expect of students during exam times and make sure everyone has an equal chance to do their best.

If you have any specific queries or comments, please send them to mc.officer@ucl.ac.uk

They've totally messed up this year. 3rd year Physics and Astronomy timetable for me has five exams over four consecutive days from the 8th until the 11th of May. The two exams which are on the same day are right in the middle too. Then there's a week before I have two exams next to one another. And why is it we didn't ge the exam timetable's out until the last day of term? My Physics friends have two exams on the 27th of April. APRIL?! This sucks.

It's worrying that out of how ever many thousand must have been affected by this that only fifteen of our colleagues have replied!

I'm sitting my finals this year and have a double day on 26th April, then exams of either 2 or 3 hours on the 1st, 3rd and 4th May. To put this into perspective, I handed in my 12000 word dissertation on 19th March and have two bits of 3000 word coursework to do over Easter and then the revision on top. Wisely, I worked my a@@e off last term and did most of the preparatory reading for the coursework then - many of my friends did not and hence have had little time to revise. I have three further comments:

1. Whatever exam dates, there's only so many hours in a day and good coursework and good dissertations don't happen over night. This is supposed to be a world class university and I feel that I am being denied the chance to achieve my best because of a level of incompetency that seems to pervade across every level of the institution.

2. My department encourages us to manage our time - this is made impossible by the above noted, incompetence on behalf of the university.

3. The exam period runs until 26th May. Why has no-one mentioned any exams in those dates? Without wanting to cast aspersions I have a feeling that the effect of Portico has been to 'rationalise' the exam timetable so that the exam period has been condensed and UCL doesn't have to pay for the hire of multiple exam venues.

And, as a parting word, to rub salt into the would - Cruciform 1 is now out of service so I've been dumped into some random lecture theatres for two of my exams - one of which isn't even on the locations list. UCL should be embarrassed!

I feel bitterly let down by the computer system. Where is the 'human' dimension to this exam timetable. I'm a third year Geographer. All first year exams (worth 0%) of degree mark seem to be before the third year exams. 2 in one day, over in a week. 4th May. What's going on?

3rd year electrical and electronic engineering, I have 4 exams out of 6 on consecutive days, 15, 16, 17, 18/05,!!! Third year courses are difficult and these terriblly spaced exams are really nightmares.....

Another unhappy customer here......and my timetable is worse than most of those above. My exams start on the 9th May and end on the 16th with six exams in that space, on the 9th, 10th 11th, 14th, 15th, 16th. To put that into perspective my exams are on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of consecutive weeks, and all are 3 hours long. I've just accepted it as "one of those things".

After the toughest term regarding coursework, the 2nd year geography exams (or my modules at least) are the 27th April, 1st, 2nd, 3rd (two exams) and 4th of May! Thats 12 hours of exams in 4 days. I see no way that I will be able to do my best in certainly the last of these exams, despite having worked hard all term. While these are only 2nd year exams they do count towards my degree which I feel may suffer just because of 'bad luck' with the timetable. And I'm paying tuition fees supposedly for teaching until the 8th of June?! Ridiculous..

Out of interest, why does UCL see the need to have exams between 23rd April and 26th May when other universities only START their exams at the end of May? It leaves no time over the Easter 'holidays' to actually have a break and have enough time to prepare for exams.. We work hard enough during term we deserve a couple of weeks off before the stress begins!

The third year physics timetable is pathetic. Taking the fact that all exams have to be done in third term they have put them way too early. Two exams on one day on the 27th of April. Then more later on 8th and 9th of may. Now if we had exams per term I would not mind. However since students have to do exams in this single term, 27th of April is just plain wrong.

ive just read this, 2nd year audiology is one on 26th april which is a thursday and then one on mon, tue, wed, thu, & fri on week begining april 30th. and apparantly final year audiology students have got it even worse. seriously theres nothing more to say, i think that says it all :-(

none of the timetables r that bad, in A levels we had 6 hours in a day, unis much easier, better to get them over and done with, if your intelligent enough to get into ucl then u should be able to cope without whining.

Thanks to everyone for adding... Your timetables will be collated with the others. I'm afraid there's no new news beyond what was posted on April 2nd (see above), but if you have any specific questions do send them to me on mc.officer@ucl.ac.uk.

1st Year Computer Science with 2 electives - Management and Economics. Exams on 26,27,30 April,1,2,3 May. Those are my first 6 exams on consecutive days not including the weekend and then the last two are a week and two weeks after. Nice.

Come on guys - it's not that bad!!! We are uni students so exams shouldn't be something weird for us! Even 5 of them in 3 days!!! What do you want to do between them? Revise? Is one day enough to revise? So maybe UCL should give you a week to revise between each one? But then you're complaining that exam period lasts one month!
I think you should concentrate on learning guys - not complaining. And if you want a scary example of how bad can be exam session planned - refer to any polish uni: they have exams during whole year - at least 8 from each subject. Moreover every week they have at least two of them. During the whole year. And to make things worse - on last week they have 8 exams in 10 days. Usually one or two "double days" at least. So UCL is really great in comparison to that.