Examinations

Exam schedule

• Before the start of the academic year the exam dates are published, usually around July. All exchange students will receive the exam schedule.
• Once the exam dates are set, they cannot be changed. Students should take this into account when planning their journey home. An early flight home is not accepted as a reason for granting a special exam arrangement.
• The exact times of the exams will be announced later on.
• There are no online exams. All exams must be taken in person in Groningen.

• Students must enroll in the courses they want to take, and must be registered for examinations. Correct and timely enrolment in a course automatically leads to registration for the exam: based on this course enrolment, the Faculty will register students for the examination and possible resit. NOTE: this only works for digital exams.
• If the assessment is done by a paper, or an oral exam, then no automatic registration for such an exam will take place. More information on day/time of other forms of exams will be made available via the Student Portal and/or the lecturer.

Type of exams

Oral and digital examinations are used to assess students’ comprehension of lectures and required reading. In some cases performance is assessed and grades are given on the basis of papers, presentations, quality of participation in group discussions and other assignments.

• Digital Examinations - The standard type of exam in Groningen. Students will use the university computers to take the exam. The duration of a digital examination is on average two hours. Digital examinations may consist of multiple choice questions, problem questions, essay questions, or a combination. In general, this will have previously been indicated by the teacher of the course.

• Oral Examinations - Oral examinations are arranged by the teachers, and generally lasts half an hour to an hour. In principle, oral exams must take place in the same examination period as the digital exams following the semester or during midterm exams. Right after the oral exam, the student will receive the result.
• Paper - Student have to do research and write a paper on a specific topic and hand it in before a pre-set deadline. For some of the papers a class presentation is part of the exam.

The results of all type of examinations are published by the examination office in Progress and on Brightspace, and are usually available within 10 working days. Papers take longer: 20 working days.

First Examination & Resit

Every module has two examinations per academic year: the first examination and the resit. When students pass the first examination, they have passed the course and it will not be necessary to take the resit. If a student fails both examinations, then in principle there is no possibility any more to pass the course in the same academic year. An extra examination (i.e. a third chance) in the same year is not possible (unless the exam is the very last exam of the student’s law studies)! In this case students need to contact the exchange study adviser Berenice Domínguez Armenta: exchangelaw@rug.nl to ask for advice.

The academic calendar shows when each exam period and resit period takes place.