Exam Policies

Exam Times

  • Midterm 1 is taken asynchronously (more below) at a time of your choosing.
  • Midterm 2 is Date TBD PT.
  • The final exam is on Tuesday, 5/12/2026 from 8 AM - 11 AM.

(Source for final exam: Registrar website.)

Exams are in-person only, so if you are enrolling in the class, you should plan on being physically present on campus for the midterm and final exam dates.

Alternate Exam Times

If you are unable to take the exam at the scheduled time, we will be offering only one alternate exam time per exam, in-person only, immediately after the scheduled exam.

  • Alternate Midterm 1 time: TBD.
  • Alternate Midterm 2 time: TBD.
  • Alternate final exam time: TBD (you’ll have some time to walk between exams and take a quick break).

(Note: The alternate midterm times used to say 10pm–12am, but we changed them to be earlier. If the earlier time doesn’t work for you, please fill out the exam alterations form to let us know.)

There are no other alternate exam times. You cannot take the exam on other days, and you cannot take the exam earlier than the listed time. If you plan on enrolling, you should make sure you can attend the exam times.

(If you have a verified DSP accommodation, we will work with you to find an exam time that meets your accommodations. If you are not registered with DSP, the paragraph above applies.)

We are only offering the alternate exam time if you are unable to take the exam at the normal time. For example, if you have another exam at the same time, you can take the alternate-time exam. However, wanting a break between non-conflicting exams would not be a valid reason to take the alternate-time exam, because in this case you are able to take the exam at the normal time.

We’ll release a form closer to the exams for you to sign up for an alternate-time exam.

If you are unable to attend the normal exam or the alternate-time exam (e.g. because of sickness), please email cs61b@berkeley.edu.

Exam Clobbering

For those of you who miss midterm 2 or perform poorly on it, the exam clobbering policy gives you a chance to replace your midterm 2 score with your final exam score.

Specifically, if it helps your score, we will replace your midterm 2 score by its “final percentile equivalent” (FPE). For example, suppose you score in the bottom quartile of midterm 2. Later, you improve significantly and earn the median score (i.e. you are at the 50th percentile) on the final. In this case, we will replace your midterm 2 score by the medians for midterm 2.

Percentiles will be based on the grades before this policy is applied. In other words, we will not recalculate the statistics for midterm 2 for the purposes of implementing this policy.

The final exam percentile clobbering policy will only be applied if it helps your midterm 2 score. For example, if you score the median on midterm 2, but then have a bad day and do terribly on the final, we will not change your midterm 2 score.

While this does mechanism introduce a bit of “curving” to the class, in practice it does not turn the class into a competition. Our grading bins are still fixed, a vast majority of the points are not subject to this mechanism, and the impact tends to be relatively small for most students.

In theory, it would be nice to have a mechanism that avoids use any statistics, e.g. simply replacing midterm 2 score by the final grade if it’s higher. In practice it is very difficult to get all the exam medians and variances to line up (skill issue, sry). Therefore, we use a percentile clobbering policy as described above.

Regrade Request Policy

If you think we made a mistake when grading your exam, you can request a regrade through Gradescope.

You should only request a regrade if there is a rubric item that clearly applies to your answer. For example:

Regrade sample

In this case, your answer is eligible for the “Partial: 120” rubric item, so you can request a regrade request.

However, if you answered “–121”, this is not on the rubric. If you request a regrade asking for partial credit, it will be denied.

If you want to ask for credit for something that’s not on the rubric, you should ask publicly on Ed. A good rule of thumb is: If regrading your answer would change the rubric for everybody else, you should post on Ed.

Note on partial credit: To minimize the effect of random guessing on exam scores, we are stricter than other classes when it comes to partial credit:

  • An answer that is fully correct except for one very minor mistake is usually worth half-credit.
  • An answer with 2 or more minor mistakes is usually not worth credit.
  • An answer showing conceptual misunderstanding is usually not worth credit. Similarly, an answer where we cannot distinguish between a conceptual misunderstanding and a typo is usually not worth credit.

Asking for more partial credit is not going to be very helpful. Remember, we curve the exam to a target average of 65%, so when we hand out less partial credit, it also means you get more of a grade bump from the curve. If we gave more partial credit, the curve would end up being less generous, and your overall grade wouldn’t be much different.

Some other logistical policies on regrade requests:

  • We only respond to regrade requests after the deadline for submitting them.
  • If we spot another mistake in the process of regrading your submission, we will fix it, even if your grade goes down. Please request responsibly! If you flood us with frivolous requests or requests that don’t follow the rules (e.g. “can I have partial credit for this thing that’s not on the rubric”), we’re more likely to find something else and decrease your score.