Second semester finals are scheduled to begin on Wednesday and end on Friday, with morning finals beginning at 9 a.m. and afternoon finals at 12 p.m., testing what students have learned over the past semester.

Students begin preparing using different methods.

Liana Wang (9) generally likes to read her textbooks, write out summaries and create outlines; she goes over her notes when studying for her regular tests, but she prepares more for finals.

“For example, Japanese, I just read through the textbook, I don’t really do anything else,” she said. “For history and for English I, I would do an outline, same with physics. For math I just do problems in the book.”

Differing from finals, which cover one semester, AP exams cover the entire year. Junior Alice Wu has taken both APs and finals.

“I tend to study more for APs because it’s the entire year, whereas finals is just one semester,” she said. “For some APs, I can get an 80 and get a 5. With the AP grading curve, it’s much easier to get the best possible score, whereas with finals, 100 is 100.”

English teacher Charles Shuttleworth compares finals with APs using his English class as an example.

“[Finals are] an end of the year summative exam that’s meant to assess students’ overall learning,” he said. “An AP is a standardized test. A final, in an English class, is meant to really reflect the learning in that class and so, in that sense, they’re quite different.”

Students will be tested on English on Wednesday June 3, language and history on Thursday, and science and math on Friday.

The specific Final Exam Schedule can be found on the Student Portal.