After months of homework, quizzes, classwork, projects, and participation, students walk into classrooms in June knowing that a single test could undo all their hard work. Finals have the power to shift grades, lower GPAs, and overshadow an entire year’s worth of effort in just a few hours. We believe this system is unfair. Students’ performance over ten months should matter more than how they perform on one day, and finals simply do not reflect that.
Everybody who has been to school has heard the phrase: “Grades don’t define you.” No matter how many times this saying is repeated, it will never sit right with us. If “grades don’t define you,” then how come they seem to be such a big component in applying for college, and even jobs? Grades will forever be implemented into our lives.
When we were freshmen in high school, we both were unsure of the weight of the final exam on our grades. Yes, we were told that it was worth 10% of our grade, but with no previous experience, and how it was described by our teachers, we were not expecting our grades to drop as significantly as they did. Colleges see. Colleges care. Colleges reject. Our solid A- freshman year dropped down to a B+. Is that the end of the world? Yes. Now our GPA is not at its full potential because of an unnecessary, lengthy, dense test.
Some schools—like Northern Valley Demarest—took these matters into their own hands and abolished the final exam as a whole. Our rivals, the Norsemen, avoid the exam by assigning projects for their students to complete. Easy 100s. Am I right? While other schools are assigning assignments in place of finals, Tenafly students are cramming knowledge of five different subjects into their frontal lobes, which aren’t fully developed. Do you need us to repeat that for you? One week, five tests, each 100 questions.
Many teachers expect us to begin studying for the finals months prior. At the same time, during junior year, arguably the most crucial, students are also heavily studying for the SAT, ACT, and AP tests, each of which is very high stakes. On top of extracurriculars, this would eliminate so much of our free time that our whole teenage life would revolve around school and studying. Wake up, school, sleep, repeat. We would like to have a life outside of school, whether it be playing sports or going to the gym. We, personally, would like to stay in shape, so we never have to rely on Ozempic. However, how are we going to be able to find time in the spring to workout if we have finals racing towards us?
What they’re asking from us is impossible. Retaining so much information from back in September is just unrealistic. This torture needs to end. It doesn’t help that when studying for these exams, our teachers continue to assign tests and assignments. Don’t you guys ever get tired of grading? Although teachers will often say that they understand, and don’t want to assign this, we don’t have the same level of knowledge as our teachers, most of whom have been teaching for many years and studied the subject in college, practically experts in their field. We are no longer studying to live; we are living to study.
Although we strongly disagree with the weight and format of final exams, we do understand why they exist. Finals are meant to prepare students for college, where major exams often determine a large portion of a grade. They encourage long-term review, independent studying, time management, and the ability to perform under pressure. Teachers do not want students to enter college unprepared or unaware of how high-stakes testing works. We recognize that finals are designed with good intentions. However, understanding their purpose does not change how overwhelming and unfair their impact can feel when one test has the power to undermine an entire year of consistent effort.
With the goals we have and our strong determination, we will, unfortunately, completely lock in for the months proceeding the final. Just because we do it, that does not make it okay. We are still recovering from the previous finals that have significantly impacted our grades. Our transcripts are stained forever, and now all we can really do is write this to hopefully change administrators’ and teachers’ minds for the future students of Tenafly… and maybe even us this year.
In the end, this is bigger than one week in June. It is about what schools choose to value and what they choose to measure. If education is meant to recognize growth, effort, understanding, and progress over time, then the way students are assessed should reflect those priorities. A system that reduces a year of learning to a single moment deserves to be questioned. Not out of defiance, but out of a desire to make education fairer and more accurate for the students it is meant to support. Maybe it is time to reconsider whether the system we have accepted for so long is truly the one that serves students best, or if there is a better way to recognize what learning really looks like.
We are just two girls who believe there is a need for change, and we hope others will see it too. We also understand that not everything can go our way, and change takes time. Still, if our words can start a conversation or make someone rethink the process, then it is worth speaking up.
