Finnish exam week and matriculation exams for dummies, short course.

Dozens of books, hundreds of pages, billions of notes to be read. That's what exam week and matriculation exams are all about! Yesterday our exam week started with socialstudies exam and today we had a math test. -.-  Thank god it's Friday and the weekend is about to start. And how are we going to spend it? By reading for the exams, of course! 

Our school year is divided to five different periods, each one with different subjects. At the end of every period we have an exam week and the schedule depends on which courses you have selected for the period. For the exam you have to read the whole course book (every subject has its own, ofc) + the notes you have made and the material teacher has given to you. Every course has its own code letter on the course plate and the codes are from A to G. For example our exam schedule is like this:

31.3.2011 - 8.4.2011
A. socialstudies  ---> exam A on Thursday
B. maths  --->  exam B on Friday
C. swedish ---> exam C on Monday
D. geography ---> exam D on Tuesday
E. philosophy ---> exam E on Wednesday
F. english ---> exam F on Thursday
G. finnish ---> exam G on Friday

On Monday, the 11th of April, the new period starts.

On the third year (usually) we have the most hardest and exhausting exams ever, the matriculation exams.

To graduate you need to take 4 subjects on matriculation level. Finnish is the only obligated subject, then two theorethical subjects (you can choose from: socialstudies, history, religion, chemistry, physics, health education, psychology, philosophy, biology and geography). The fourth subject can be either a language (A-,B, or C-level) or A-level or B-level math. At least on of the subjects has to be taken on A-level (A= advanced).

Before you can take a matriculation exam, you have to complete all mandatory courses from the subject you have chosen. For each matriculation exam you have to study every course book, all notes and other materials from that subject, for example, on A-level English we have six mandatory courses, and also it is recommended to take some extra courses as well, because the questions on the exam can also be about the stuff on specialisation courses. The matriculation exams are held on autumn and spring.

  

Here you can see this springs A-level English matriculation exam (written part)

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Hopefully you got somekind of idea about finnish exam weeks and the matriculation exams! Now, back to studying! ;)

Best wishes, Jonna and Niko

ps. see you in Rome!