You've finished your college courses and are all set to graduate, or at least you think so. But then, your college or university requires you to take and pass an exit exam. And for some reason, whether other distractions, study issues, inattention, or even anomalies in the exam itself, you discover that you did not pass your school's exit exam. When you need to know what may happen to your school record and graduation, and what you can do about it, contact the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your exit exam issue. Let our skilled and experienced education law attorneys help.
School Exit Exams
An exit exam is an assessment, usually of an hour or a couple or few hours of answering questions on a computer, at the end of your school program, measuring the academic capacities you possessed or developed while in school. You may be well aware of high school exit exams, which are required in many states across the nation, including Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming. You may have had to take a high school proficiency test in your senior year to show school administrators that you developed the basic proficiencies your state requires of all graduates receiving a high school diploma. Or you may be completely new to the experience of a school exit exam. Be aware, though, that exit exams are a relatively common feature of the educational landscape.
Criticism of School Exit Exams
Exit exams suffer criticism from education scholars. Critiques of school exit exams point to their unfairness to students who struggle with standardized testing, whether because of learning disabilities, English-language deficiencies, cultural differences, or other issues common to education. Scholars also question whether exit exams really measure what they claim to measure or instead just favor students who are good at memorizing information and good at test taking. The University of Michigan offers its instructors coaching on how to design a better exit exam. Whether or not valid and reliable, exit exams also add yet another level of assessment, cost, burden, stress, and challenge to an already challenging educational environment. Many nursing students, for instance, must take one of the two common nursing school exit exams, the ATI exam or HESI exam, just to qualify at their school for the NCLEX national nursing licensing exam. Some schools pile exams upon exams, burdening and stressing students. You are not alone if you find your college or university exit exam to be burdensome and an unreasonable obstacle to your hard-earned graduation.
College Exit Exams
You may not have realized that many colleges and universities also require exit exams, either broadly across program levels, as at Volunteer State University, where all associate's degree graduates must take an exit exam, or within specific schools and programs, as at Texas Southern University where all business school graduates must take an exit exam. You may have failed to plan and register in a timely manner for your college or university exit exam, so you now face potential delays in your graduation. Colleges and universities requiring exit exams typically require that your name appear on the list of graduating students who took and completed the exam, or you may not qualify for graduation. Austin Peay State University is an example, requiring all graduating seniors to be on its completed exam list to graduate. And you may not have adequately prepared for your college or university exit exam. You may worry that you have failed or will fail your college or university exit exam. If you face college exit exam issues interfering with your graduation, get the help of our skilled and experienced attorneys.
State Rules Requiring College Exit Exams
Most states do not require college exit exams. However, you may find that the state in which your college or university is located requires an exam. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission, under the Tennessee Board of Regents, requires an exit exam of all graduates of the state's public colleges and universities. Tennessee Tech University is an example, acknowledging that the state requires it to give an exit exam to all students to evaluate its curriculum's effectiveness and to qualify under state funding formulas. Tennessee State University, Chattanooga State Community College, Roane State Community College, and Columbia State Community College are other examples of schools following state law requiring exit exams.
Colleges and Universities Requiring Exit Exams
Your college or university may need to give you an exit exam not just to satisfy state law, rule, or regulation but instead to prove to government agencies, academic accreditors, alumni, employers, and other constituents that its graduates have the knowledge and skills your school claims. Community colleges, technical institutes, and other non-traditional programs serving as access schools for vocational training and underprivileged populations may especially use exit exams to show accreditors, alumni, and employers that their programs meet rigorous standards and that their graduates have valuable skills. The three community college programs just cited, Chattanooga State Community College, Roane State Community College, and Columbia State Community College, all in Tennessee, are examples. So is Missouri's Crowder College, another state community college. If your college or university requires an exit exam, it likely has good reason to do so despite the burden on you. Let us help you address college exit exam obstacles with your school.
Optional College Exit Exams
Some colleges and universities invite students to take exit exams, without necessarily requiring that they do so. California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) is an example. Cal Poly recruits one hundred students to take the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+) exam that hundreds of colleges and universities use, primarily to assess their own programs. The CLA+ exam tests entering and exiting students, helping the schools to measure how much they are actually doing for their students. Cal Poly, for instance, uses the CLA+ results to boast that their students are within the top two percent of similar program graduates nationally. You may do your college or university a service by participating voluntarily in an entrance and exit exam. But be sure you understand whether the results may affect you individually before you accept the invitation.
Content of College Exit Exams
College and university exit exams often do not include substantial field-specific content information. If your college or university uses a broad exit exam to assess graduate reasoning skills across fields, then the exam's questions are likely to contain all the information necessary for you to correctly answer the question, as long as you exercise the expected reasoning skills. The senior exit exam at Austin Peay State University is an example, requiring only critical-thinking skills, not field-specific information recall. If, instead, your college or university program requires an exit exam within your specific program or school, then the exam is likely to require not only your reasoning skills but also your recall of field-specific content information. Major field tests at Austin Peay State University are an example of testing content specific to the tested major. The business school exit exam at Texas Southern University is another example, requiring “knowledge of general business content areas and ability to apply significant facts, concepts, theories, and analytical methods.” Consult our attorneys if you have graduation issues based on the content your college or university used for your exit exam.
Challenges of College Exit Exams
Students can face serious issues with taking, completing, and passing a college exit exam. Notice of the requirement can be a problem when the student is unaware of the requirement until very near graduation. Late notice of the exam may lead to registration, scheduling, timing, study, preparation, and even travel and computer or other technology issues. Some colleges and universities, such as Texas Southern University, require that students use specific computer operating systems or programs to complete the exit exam. Many, such as Tennessee State University, require graduating seniors to take the exam in a specific location on campus, when students may have already traveled to internship sites, for foreign study, or be studying remotely at that late point in their program. Many colleges and universities require students to take the exam during their last term, not early, thus limiting rescheduling opportunities. College exit exams can come at the worst time, when graduating students are already transitioning into life after school and have added new work, travel, moving, family, and other obligations.
Cause of College Exit Exam Problems
College exit exam problems, including the inability to take, complete, or pass the exam, resulting in delayed graduation, can arise from a wide range of causes, including many circumstances beyond a student's control. Get our help if one or more of the following issues has prevented you from completing and passing your school's exit exam, and you are unable to graduate as a result. Causes of college exit exam problems can include:
- illness, sickness, disease, or other medical issue that prevents the student from attending and completing the exam;
- motor vehicle accident injury, sports injury, injury from falls, or injury from domestic violence or other causes, preventing exam attendance;
- mental illness, emotional disability, or other psychological issue that prevents the student from concentrating and completing the exam;
- pressing work assignments, challenges, and demands, including necessary travel for work, preventing exit exam attendance;
- the illness or injury of a minor child or other dependent family member for whom the student must care, preventing exam attendance;
- financial reversals and bankruptcies, civil litigation over business or family disputes, criminal charges, and other crises preventing the student from devoting time to the exam and preparation; and
- travel for internships, foreign study, or other reasons, taking one abroad or far from the nearest exit exam location.
Uses of College Exit Exams
Colleges and universities use exit exams differently. Those uses fall into the following broad categories. Know how your college or university intends to use your exit exam so that you treat the exam accordingly. How your school uses your exam may affect how you approach the exam and how you respond to any issues you face in graduating because of the exam requirement. Let us help you if you face issues with any of these uses, interfering with your ability to graduate, gain further education, gain licensure, or gain employment.
Institutional Uses of College Exit Exams
Many colleges and universities use exit exams not so much to evaluate the individual student but to evaluate the effectiveness of the school's program. If that is your school's only use of your exit exam, then your school may not even require you to obtain a certain score. Your school may only require you to complete the entire exam. You may not be able to graduate without completing the exam, but you need not necessarily give the exam any special study, worry, or attention. Roane State University's exit exam is an example of an exam used only for institutional, not individual purposes. Columbia State University's exit exam is another example of the university's urge for student effort, not because it will affect the student but because it may help the school.
Other Schools' Uses of College Exit Exams
Other colleges, universities, and graduate or professional school programs may also use a student's college or university exit exam. You may, for instance, be moving on to graduate school or professional school at your same college or university or another college or university. Those other schools and programs may want to see your exit exam score to ensure that you qualify for admission to your next school program. In that case, you would want to know that your exam requires or recommends your sound preparation and good effort.
Individual Uses of College Exit Exams
Some colleges and universities also use exit exams not only to determine their program's effectiveness but also to determine the fitness for graduation of each individual student. The major field tests at Austin Peay University are an example where individual scores count. Nursing schools that require students to pass the ATI Exit Exam or HESI Exit Exam before taking the NCLEX are another example. In those cases, you would want to ensure that you prepare for the exam and give your best effort to obtain your best score. You would not want to give the exam inadequate attention, only to receive a failing score that disqualifies you from graduation or from moving on to take a professional licensure exam.
Employer Uses of College Exit Exams
Colleges and universities are not the only ones that use college exit exams. Employers who learn of a student's failure of a college exit exam may be duly concerned that the student, although graduating with a degree, did not learn what the degree represents. One of the risks to college exit exams is that the results may purport to expose significant gaps in learning when, to the contrary, other factors like unpreparedness, illness, or lack of effort contribute to poor exit exam performance. Learn how your school intends to use your exit exam results before you take the exam. Get our help with obstacles your results create to your graduation, licensure, or employment.
College Exit Exam Scores
Colleges and universities vary widely in how they score exit exams and whether they reveal scores to the student or to others. As just shown, many schools using the exam use them only for institutional purposes. While those schools must still score each exam, those schools will likely not disclose individual scores and will instead use only aggregate scores. Those aggregates may show the school whether instruction and student performance are improving or decreasing and where gaps may exist in instruction or student performance. Other schools do disclose individual scores, especially those schools that administer the exit exams in major fields of study or to meet state proficiency requirements. Again, know how your school intends to use your score, and prepare accordingly. If you've already faced obstacles due to exit exam issues, get our help.
Potential Impacts of College Exit Exams
You can see from the above discussion that exit exams can carry risks for college and university students and graduates. One risk is that the student is unable to complete the exam or, if the school requires a passing score, to achieve that score, resulting in delayed graduation. You may, in that case, have to wait until the following term to complete or pass the exit exam, resulting in a delay of one or more terms in your graduation. You could, in that case, lose admission to a graduate or professional program, lose a job or internship, and suffer issues and expenses around student loans, student housing, transportation, health insurance, immigration visas, and other transition issues. Watch out for collateral consequences of exit exam issues. Get our help addressing those issues.
School Transcripts and College Exit Exams
Your college or university may well delay your graduation until you have completed its required exit exam, if your school has such a requirement. The above discussion shows you that multiple schools have such a requirement. But colleges and universities are much less likely to enter an actual exit exam score on your school transcript, especially if they only use the exit exam for institutional rather than individual purposes. Austin Peay University, for example, states expressly that “individual scores are kept confidential and are not recorded on transcripts.” You may still face the risk that your failure to complete the exit exam in a timely manner will show up on your transcript indirectly, causing a delay in your graduation. And your failure of a required major field test or other exam used for individual assessment purposes may end up with a transcript notation disclosing your exit exam score or issue. Get our help with transcript issues to keep your academic record clear of such issues.
Graduation and College Exit Exams
The above discussion shows multiple examples of colleges and universities requiring that students take and complete, and in some cases obtain a passing score on, a college or university exit exam. Some schools make it reasonably clear that they will delay your graduation for failing to complete the exam, even if used only for institutional purposes. Tennessee Tech University is an example, indicating that the university places a hold on the graduation certificate. Other schools indicate that they require the exam but are less clear on whether they may permit you an exemption. Some schools, again like Tennessee Tech University, indicate that they will follow up with emails and professor contacts if you miss an exam, suggesting that they may be reasonably lenient on the requirement. Let our attorneys help you seek your school's leniency if you cannot complete the exit exam and your inability is delaying your graduation.
Opting Out of College Exit Exams
You may have the right or privilege of opting out of your school's exit exam. Some schools, again like Tennessee Tech University, expressly offer exemptions from the exit exam for things like students learning only in remote programs or students who already possess a college or university degree at the same level as the one for which they are graduating. You may qualify for an exemption, whether published in your school's policies or unpublished, but offered at the discretion of school officials. Let us help you invoke exemption opportunities if completing the exam is your obstacle.
Disability Accommodations for College Exit Exams
You may also be due disability accommodations for your college or university exit exam, especially if you qualified for accommodations for other exams under your school's disability procedures. Austin Peay University, for example, urges students with disabilities to contact its accommodations office for exit exam relief.
Premier Defense Services Available Nationwide
If you face issues with your college or university exit exam that are delaying your graduation or otherwise interfering with your substantial interests, then retain the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team to help you address those issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your exit exam matter.
