Fifth week activities

This week's main topic is examinations. Your mentee is very new to the local grading system along with how professors evaluate academic performance in general. Since the individual departments, furthermore professors within one department may place emphasis on different topics this can be confusing for a first year student as you have experienced it yourself. Please, go through all the relevant subjects with your mentoree (you may ask her/him to bring class syllabuses to identify subjects easier) and discuss practical information and specifics. This is where your personal knowledge and experiences can come really valuable. We suggest you to include talking separately about:

1.) Written exams (midterms, quizzes, written assignments)
2.) Oral exams (formal/informal elements about these occasions)
3.) How students can sign up for exams, what happens if a student fails to show up for an exam or does not pass an exam. You may mention the system of retakes.

It is also important to talk about getting extra consultations from professors, take advantage of demonstrator system (to maximalize test-preparedness) Please, mentioned the benefits of class attandence and active participations (asking questions) so professors can identify students better. Make also sure you remind them about formal dress-codes for oral exams, what it means, what the local custom is in this regard. We recommend you to tell your mentoree what happens during an exam (orals in particular) step by step. Link to explore:

Study and examination rules

Overview of exam rules

Mental framing for mentors - a deeper understanding of fifth week.