Around the middle of April, there’s a certain kind of fear that settles over the University of Warwick. It’s not the revision yet. It’s when the exam schedule shows up in your email that you realize you don’t have much time to breathe.
Warwick has kept its hybrid assessment model for the 2025–26 school year. This model includes both in-person and online tests spread out over several time periods during the year. The December block goes from December 15th to December 19th, and the January block goes from January 12th to January 16th. From March 9th to March 20th, there is a new stretch. Next is the April window, which runs from April 27 to May 8. Then there is another tight week in May, from May 11 to 15. The biggest and possibly hardest block is the summer one, which lasts from May 18th to June 25th. Retakes and postponements add to the stress of schoolwork into late August and early September.
Some of the most anger builds up during that summer block. On paper, five weeks of tests sounds like it would be easy to handle. For some students, this means taking tests every other day with almost no time to rest in between. A psychology student in her last year said that all six of her 24-hour online tests were stacked on top of each other, with only one day between them. This is the kind of planning that makes sense when you look at a spreadsheet. You can’t defend yourself as well when you’re going through it.
The release date of the Warwick exam schedule is one of the things that makes it feel extra stressful. A little more than a month before the summer tests started, students got their schedules the week of April 13th. The university has said that this has been a problem and that it was able to release the schedule a week earlier than last year because of feedback from students. That improvement is important. But giving only one month’s notice to change work shifts, cancel plans, and rearrange your entire study plan is still not much time, especially for students who have part-time jobs or other professional obligations in addition to their studies.
There are two steps to the process of making a schedule. First, there is the official schedule that lists every module and when it is due for examination. After about a week, each student gets a personalized copy that only has their own tests on it. It seems to be in order. In the space between the two, though, there’s room for error. One student found that an exam date on the general schedule didn’t match up with one on their personalized one. The test had been moved up by a whole month without anyone knowing. Plans had already been made, shifts had been booked, and work experience had been set up by the time they found out. All of that couldn’t just be taken back.
Still, it’s not clear how often these kinds of changes to students’ schedules happen in general. According to the university, timetabling problems are rare because it’s hard to find a good balance between course options and assessment formats. That makes sense as an explanation. But for students, the fact that things are complicated at the administrative level doesn’t make them feel better.
Not everyone thinks the process is too hard to handle. One Economics student just shrugged it off, saying that exams might not be evenly distributed, but that’s college life. Something almost refreshing about that way of thinking. Still, it’s possible that the students who are most affected are also the ones who have the least freedom: final-year students whose dissertations were turned in months ago but who are still waiting for a single exam in the middle of June that will decide what kind of degree they will receive.
At its core, the Warwick exam timetable is a document that helps with planning. But you should pay attention to the difference between how it works as a scheduling tool and how it works for each student. It seems like the university is trying—the earlier release, the wellness programs like Destresstival, and the promise to cut down on fights. That’s something that students will have to decide for themselves, one exam window at a time.
