The time you take an oral exam could affect whether you pass or fail

University students are more likely to pass oral exams if they are taken at around midday, according to a study of more than 100,000 assessments.

Carmelo Vicario at the University of Messina, Italy, was inspired to investigate this after coming across a study that suggests judges’ decisions are affected by how close it is to a mealtime. “I was trying to see if this could be true in education,” says Vicario.

With his colleagues, Vicario combed through a public database to gather information on the outcomes and timings of more than 104,500 oral assessments taken by around 19,000 university students in Italy. The tests happened between October 2018 and February 2020 and were from 1243 courses.

They found that, on average, pass rates were 54 per cent at 8am, rising to 72 per cent by midday and then dropping to 51 per cent by 4pm. “We found this beautiful, bell-shaped distribution of data,” says Vicario.

This was consistent across all types of oral assessments, such as language exams and research presentations. But Vicario acknowledges that we don’t know if it also applies to written tests.

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“There are a lot of external factors that affect student performance,” says Thomas Lancaster at Imperial College London. “Scheduling is one – whether it’s time of day or even the gaps between exams.”

Why such variation exists is tricky to unpick. It may come down to the students’ chronotypes – the natural inclination of our body to sleep at a certain time, which determines whether we are an early bird or a night owl.

Research suggests that younger people are more likely to be night owls and may favour a lie-in. This may be mismatched with the chronotypes of their older examiners, and so the closest point at which they align would be around midday.

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At this time of day, there may be a balance between a student performing well and an examiner being generous with their scores. “As always, the best thing is something in the middle,” says Vicario, who hopes the research will help universities plan the timings of their oral exams.

“Personally, I’m happy to use this data to argue that we shouldn’t schedule student vivas [oral assessments where you defend your thesis to examiners] or assessed presentations before 10am,” says Lancaster. “I’m sure that will make for happier lecturers as well.”