The dirty little secret about final exams

A student was worrying about the final exam in my class and wondering how to do well, but I didn't have the heart to tell her my dirty little secret: in my classes, the final exam rarely makes much difference in a student's grade.

I'm aware that this isn't true for many other classes. Some profs weight the final exam, and if the grade is based on only a few assignments, the final is bound to make a major impact.

However, in my sophomore-level literature classes, the final is just the last of a long series of grades, so a student would have to really bomb the final exam to make a dent in the overall grade. Further, the final exam isn't cumulative in content--it covers only the readings from the last three weeks of class--but it does require students to practice literary analysis skills we've been working on in and out of class since day one. A student who can respond to questions about a small amount of content and write a competent analytical essay during the final exam period will do reasonably well on the final exam.

But here's the other reason the final exam rarely impacts final grades: With a few exceptions, students perform at about the same level throughout the semester.  Occasionally a student will get a wake-up call on the first exam and then work like a maniac to improve performance on later exams, but for the most part, slackers gonna slack and gunners gonna gun and the rest settle comfortably into B/C range and stay there all semester long.

When does the final exam make a big difference? When a student doesn't show up, that zero is bound to bring down the final grade. Or when a student is on the borderline between grades, the final exam can nudge the grade in one direction or the other. Otherwise, most of my sophomore-level literature students can look at their grade before they take the final and assume that it's a pretty good reflection of where they will end up.

But I'm not explaining that to the student diligently seeking ways to excel. Let her study! Learning things, after all, is the goal, and she'll benefit from the experience of preparing for the exam even if it doesn't make a huge difference in her grade.