Opinion: Final week schedule shouldn’t be a mystery

I don’t save money on tuition, so the least NYU can do is let me save money on flights home.

The end of the spring semester includes a lot of moving parts. Students have to worry about surviving the week of the finals, packing up and leaving the dorms, and for those who live outside of New York, booking tickets home. NYU adds another challenge to this already stressful time: The university doesn’t release final exam dates until mid-semester, leaving students to fight for air tickets.

On February 14, NYU released the final exam schedule for its Washington Square campus. The Tandon School of Engineering schedule followed seven days later. By releasing these dates so late in the semester, the university prevented students from buying the best flight tickets for their summer vacation and made the relocation process unnecessarily difficult. If NYU had announced final dates sooner, students might be less worried about flight arrangements and potential ticket price hikes.

As a rule, this better buy tickets for domestic flights, approximately three months prior to departure date in summer, with last-minute tickets costing an average of $220 more. This period is usually even earlier for international flights, which tend to be more expensive and more difficult to change schedules. Students can book tickets for the end of the final examination period, but they risk spending extra days in the dorm rather than with their family if their exams fall at the beginning of the week..

Since these dates are announced towards the end of February, students tend to book flights in early March. However, a study by the University of Southern California’s Illumin Magazine found that airfare prices usually the most expensive towards the beginning of the month. Although the US university the largest number of foreign studentsNYU doesn’t seem to be considering hundreds of dollars that these students could save by booking tickets even weeks in advance.

There are other issues with the NYU Finals release schedule. The university did not publicize the release of the document, so the students did not know they had access to the information unless they were specifically looking for it. This could further delay their plans for the end of the year, as they would have to wait for news from their professors.

NYU Housing Agreement it also states that students must leave 24 hours after the last final exam. This does not give students much leeway to pack and come up with a storage space that the university does not provide if they don’t know ahead of time. If students knew how much time they had left to leave the hostel by the beginning of the semester, they could agree much earlier and focus on their studies during the exam week.

NYU may pre-determine exam dates and publish them when registration opens in Alberta, NYU’s course management system. It would also give students another factor to consider when choosing classes with lower rates, such as electives. In the same way that people avoid classes at 8am or classes on Fridays, they can avoid classes with final exams later in the day to see their families earlier.

By giving students an idea of ​​their final exams well in advance, NYU would add a bit of stability — and perhaps more family time — to a very tumultuous few weeks.

The WSN Opinion Section strives to post ideas worthy of discussion. The views expressed in the “Opinion” section are solely those of the author.

Contact Naisha Roy by phone [email protected]