Taking Exams In Absentia Hassles Students Abroad

Even with second semester in full swing, students who leave campus early to study abroad may have to contend with more than just culture shock. Of the 91 students who are spending their spring semester abroad, some are forced to take their finals in absentia.

According to the Office of the Registrar, an exam taken in absentia should usually be administered on the same day and time as scheduled in Cambridge.

But exceptions can be made when there is a significant difference in time zones in Cambridge and the examination site.

“The Ad Board will approve exceptions to [the exams abroad policy] when it is not possible, for local reasons, to comply,” Jane Edwards, Director of the Office of International Programs wrote in an e-mail.

For many, the College’s exams abroad policy has presented logistical difficulties.

For Mary A. Robinson ’06, who is studying abroad in Paris, it meant waking up at 9:15 a.m. local time, still jet-lagged and having missed all her review sessions, to take her “Statistics 104: Introduction to Quantitative Methods” final.

Robinson wrote in an e-mail that taking her finals abroad was “definitely a hassle...when everyone else is having fun in Paris.”

Angela Y. Wu ’06, a History of Art and Architecture concentrator, wrote that jet lag likely had an adverse affect on her exam performance.

After spending more than 36 hours traveling to Florence, Italy, Wu said that she didn’t discover until the last minute that her “Social Analysis 76: Global Health Challenges” final had been moved up earlier.

Had she not skipped orientation to check her e-mail, Wu wrote, she would not have even known she had a final the next morning.

Wu also said she faced other problems like securing a proctor, shelling out the $100 fee per exam, and finding a quiet place to study.

But Wu admits that her situation may be the exception, describing the experience as “traumatizing.”

Other students also point to cross-continental communication as particularly problematic.

Ryan Z. Cortazar ’06, a History and Literature concentrator studying in Madrid for the spring semester, wrote in an e-mail that he was not able to access a review sheet online for his “Statistics 100: Introduction to Quantitative Methods” final explaining a crucial concept until too late.

“[The handout] was posted late in the night in my time zone the day before I was supposed to take the exam,” he wrote in an e-mail. “And because I don’t have Internet access in my house, I couldn’t get the handout until I went to class the next day, but by then it was too late.”

But for Robinson, whose study abroad program in Paris required that she be in the country by mid-January for a three-week orientation program, the opportunity to learn abroad outweighed the paperwork—and the early morning wake-up calls—involved in taking finals in absentia.

A Romance Languages and Literature concentrator, Robinson said that while she would have preferred not to miss review sessions for her Statistics and “Literature and the Arts B-51: First Nights” finals, taking her exams abroad had its own advantages.

“There’s that feeling that you should have left Harvard behind when you took off from Logan—but no, it’s followed you all the way across the ocean,” she wrote in an e-mail. “But in a way it helped. It blends Harvard with your new destination a bit, so you don’t feel the full brunt of culture shock right way.”

—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.