Midterms and finals have been a staple in the educational system, but are they really necessary? The traditional way of assessing high school and college students is through high-risk exams that can be damaging to students’ mental health, their overall educational experience, and the damages that it can do to learning.

First, there is an extreme amount of  pressure that is associated with midterms and finals that lead to stress and anxiety among students. In an article in Rensselaer Polytechnic’s school paper, Soma Patra, a first semester college student, who has taken 7 midterms and finals, said “Between frantically trying to review multiple subjects and cramming in as much study time as possible, many people lose sight of their personal health. Besides how detrimental this can be for mental health, finals week also lends itself to poor personal hygiene, both of which can also affect a student’s performance.”

Instead of fostering a love for learning, midterms and ideals are creating a fear for failure, and pushing students to prioritize getting good grades over their overall understanding of the subject.

Midterms and finals also encourage fast memorization instead of deeper learning. In many different cases, students tend to focus more on cramming the information the days before the exams, and forget about everything right when it’s done. This approach undermines the true uprising of learning. Projects and presentations are a much better way of testing students’ knowledge, and their understanding of the material.

Also, the reliance on two exams to determine whether a student can understand a subject or not is very unfair. Not every student can perform in high pressure situations, and it can negatively affect students with learning disabilities, test anxiety, and other challenges. Factors such as different personal circumstances and health issues can also negatively affect a student’s ability to study for these big exams.  By moving away from these exams, a more equal assessment can be created to account for the different learning styles.

The emphasis on midterms and finals often detracts from the overall educational experience. Instead of engaging the students with the material in a meaningful way, it’s just forcing the students to go through the motions of the test. This focus on testing can diminish creativity and limit the students opportunities for a different type of learning. There are better, alternative ways for assessments like group projects, which create a more interactive learning environment.

The traditional system of midterms and finals do more harm than good.  It is time to rethink the approach to student assessments, and the different benefits of moving past midterms and finals, so we can create a more positive learning environment, and make students feel more accomplished and better about themselves.