By Stella Henretta

As the University of Maryland enters midterm season, some students are expressing increased stress due to the phenomenon of stacked midterms – a situation where students have multiple exams on the same day.

College midterms are known to be stressful and demanding for students. A study found that exam stress is anxiety that can prevent the recall of information during an exam, leading to a decrease in success rates, according to the scientific journal Cuestiones de Fisioterapia. This study examined the effect of exam periods on nutritional status and salivary cortisol levels of college students.

Freshman international business major Grace Gallagher, who experienced three midterms in a single day, conveyed the strain this exam period has had on her mental health and her concern with her performance on the exams.

“I’m very stressed out because it’s a lot to study for, especially when I don’t feel confident about my abilities in one of the classes,” Gallagher said. “On top of that, it’s really hard to allocate the needed time to adequately study for all three tests.”

Erin Tenorio, a sophomore accounting and information systems major, also struggles with having stacked midterms and how to distribute study time between tests.

“I feel like if you study so hard for one exam, you don’t have time for another one. All my time is put into one exam, and so I can’t fully put effort into the other ones,” Tenorio said.

A potential reason for students experiencing stacked midterms is fall break, taking place annually on the second Monday and Tuesday of October. This is the first year the university has implemented a designated fall break. 

“It’s not a great situation because it’s hard to change the fact that midterms fall on the same day. Because they’re happening before fall break, professors need to cram their exams into this week, or the week after,” freshman journalism major Ari Plotkin said. “Although I don’t have any stacked midterms, if I did, I’d be stressed out of my mind because I have other things, even outside of school, to worry about.”

Although many university instructors are aware that their midterms conflict with other courses’ exams, adjunct journalism lecturer Dr. Sara Browning believes that professors still tend to fall short of considering the stress students may experience.

“There seems to be little regard for the schedules of students, who are already under pressure and stress from being in rigorous classes. The exams, compounded with a whole new existence in college, especially for freshmen, makes stacked midterms even more challenging for students,” Browning said. “When I attended college, stacked midterms made my experience ten times more needlessly stressful.”

Twice a year, Browning attends a pre-semester meeting with journalism school faculty. During these meetings, Browning and her colleagues discuss logistics about their courses.

“Professors could easily reach out to each other and see if they have conflicting [syllabi], midterms and finals during these meetings,” Browning said. “It’s not a hard problem to solve, and I personally don’t understand why professors don’t take measures to prevent stacked midterms.”

Exams, in general, have an adverse effect on students’ mental health, according to a Harvard Graduate School of Education study. Students with exams had significantly increased stress compared to students who had no tests looming over them, the study said. The study also found that students at the New Orleans charter school network had 15% more cortisol — or stress hormone —  in their bodies during weeks with exams compared to weeks without, indicating the potential effect stacked midterms can have on student mental health. 

Stress can also affect students’ abilities to recall information and access their memory, according to Dr. Benjamin Jones, a senior lecturer in UMD’s psychology department.

“Having multiple exams on the same day can significantly increase cognitive load because students have to switch between different subject matters and recall a large amount of information in a short period of time,” Jones said.  “This can lead to mental fatigue and reduced performance, potentially affecting their overall results.”

At Cornell University, the university established a faculty policy where each semester, its Office of the University Registrar produces a final exam schedule that minimizes exam conflicts and spreads students’ workloads. With accommodations for students, this policy has decreased the number of stacked exams.

“If UMD were to adopt a similar policy, we could potentially eliminate stacked midterms,” Gallagher said. “This could seriously reduce students’ stress as studying for even a single midterm is already a strenuous task.”

Featured Image: A student studies on their laptop in the Adele H. Stamp Student Union on Oct. 8. Photo by Ella Buchanan.