During the fourth quarter, the pressure of finals, piled on top of Advanced Placement (AP) exams, NY Regents exams, and overall 4th quarter stress tends to make students’ workload increasingly unmanageable. While finals are a common evaluation of how much content we were able to absorb throughout the school year in various classes, when coupled with the various other end-of-year exams not included in students’ final grades, the weight of multiple different exam types can become crushing. 

For many students at MHS, this pressure is something they are forced to navigate every day. Eiley Vasquez (’28), described preparing for the regents and in-class finals as “really overwhelming, especially when the formatting and possibly even the content can differ so greatly.” While finals and Regents exams test the same overall content, a large amount of the studying for each exam boils down to becoming familiar with the test’s format. 

If students are already taking high-stakes standardized exams, the role of additional finals becomes difficult to justify. Annabelle Berkson (’28) confirmed that “by taking the AP and regents I’m showing my general knowledge of the subject, so a final isn’t needed.” She emphasized that “it’s so much to think about when the workload could be cut down by nearly a third without finals.” 

For many students, the importance of AP exams outweighs finals in the long term. Vasquez remarked that “AP exams are probably the hardest and most stressful tests I’ll take, so balancing that with a final will probably be almost impossible.” Similarly, she noted that “students in AP classes probably care way more about their AP scores because of how important it is to college, so why add a final to that stress?” 

If the purpose of exams is to measure learning, then more is not always better. With AP and Regents exams already in place, it may be worth asking whether finals are reinforcing knowledge or simply reinforcing stress. As MHS opens up more AP opportunities to underclassmen, and the fourth quarter is set into motion, the real test becomes how much pressure students can take.