Walk onto any college campus in December or May and you’ll see crowded libraries, color-coded study plans, and students whispering prayers over flashcards. For Nueva graduates, this ritual is unfamiliar. But it shouldn’t be.
If our school wants to prepare students for future opportunities such as college, then the absence of final exams is not just an academic quirk—it is a gap in responsibility.
I understand that finals shouldn’t define a student’s entire semester. One test cannot perfectly capture diverse strengths, and high-stakes exams induce excessive stress—the idea of an end-all-be-all exam rightly makes students uneasy.
Those concerns justify why finals shouldn’t dominate the grade, but not why they should disappear. Finals need not be “all-or-nothing.” A well-designed system can give exams a meaningful but reasonable weight. They don’t have to be stressful to be useful; their purpose is to encourage studying and review.
Additionally, we already accept exams elsewhere, such as language and math placement tests. If these are considered legitimate evaluations of ability, a thoughtfully weighted final should not be dismissed as inherently unfair.
Most colleges still give cumulative finals. Freshmen are expected to know how to manage pressure, study over long periods, and handle the intensity of finals week. Yet how would our graduates know? If we’ve never asked them to practice these skills, we are sending them into one of the most demanding academic environments of their lives without full preparation.
Our school already recognizes the value of scaffolding: ninth graders receive shadow grades as a gentle introduction to letter evaluations. A school committed to student learning should not shield students from the very challenges they will soon navigate independently.
Similarly, we cannot ignore the educational value of final exams.
Since transferring to Nueva as a sophomore, I often treated rubric items like checkboxes. Complete it, get the grade, never look again. Unless teachers build in review time, the first unit’s content quietly evaporates once we reach the last. By the second semester, I sometimes feel I’m reconstructing earlier units from scratch.
By contrast, at my previous school, finals ensured that I remembered content more effectively. Studying for math finals forced me to revisit earlier concepts, making later units feel like extensions of prior learning. In English and history, I drafted practice essays, reviewed old notes, and reconnected themes across units. That process made later material easier to understand—the earlier content was still fresh.
Cognitive research supports this: cumulative retrieval and spaced review significantly strengthen long-term retention. Finals naturally create conditions where these learning habits take place.
The value of finals extends beyond just retention. When students know a cumulative assessment is coming, they take clearer notes, review earlier topics, plan ahead, and develop long-term study habits that future academic environments will demand. For students whose grade falls just above or below a cutoff, a final can be a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate growth.
Finals can help teachers, too. Cumulative assessments reveal what students actually retained, guiding second-semester adjustments and highlighting common misconceptions that might otherwise remain unnoticed. In STEM classes especially, where concepts build on earlier foundations, assessing long-term understanding is essential.
Finals do introduce stress, but that stress is not inherently harmful and can be managed. A cumulative exam creates pressure, but it also teaches students how to study over time and avoid last-minute cramming. Designed well, finals can replace panic with planning. The real question isn’t whether finals should exist, but how. With reasonable weight, clear expectations, designated review periods, and coordination across classes, intentionally structured finals can turn stress into preparation, rather than burnout.
Removing finals does not protect students; it simply delays the learning curve until the stakes are much higher. A school committed to fostering curiosity, growth, and lifelong learning should equip students with the tools to succeed beyond its campus. Introducing cumulative final exams is one meaningful step toward that goal.
