Both the Midterms and the Finals are taken very seriously. If a student misses the exam day or fails miserably, a conference for teacher, parents, and student will be held. Together, the exams make up nearly fifty percent of the overall grade, meaning they could destroy the student's grade.
There are no practices for sports or club meetings during the week of the tests. The students get the first two days of the week off for studying. They resume school on Wednesday where they go to their usual first hour class, homeroom. From then on, they follow a different schedule. Students will not be permitted into the classroom late and will miss the exam.
The students do not follow their usual schedule. Certain exams are held at specific times. Students will go to the class for the exam at that classes assigned time slot. During some hours, there may not be any exams scheduled that the student needs to take. In that case, student's are to report to the cafeteria and wait until their next exam begins.
The following is the exam schedule for Class B. It is the same for both midterms and finals.
Midterms: 1st term during the third week of May 2nd term during the last full week of October 3rd term has no midterms
Finals: 1st term during the second week of July 2nd term during the first week of December 3rd term during the first full week of March
Finals are held on Friday and Saturday.
ENTRANCE EXAMS
Students waiting outside the school before entrance examination begins.
Students in Japan have to take entrance examination for junior high school, high school, and university, or if they change institutions. It is highly competitive, and many students attend special preparation schools (juku) besides their regular classes. Entrance exams for Gakuin are held on February 15 at the school, and results are released a month later. Being a school of delinquents, Gakuin's exams are not too rigorous, but are made so not everyone can get in. Those that attend Gakuin's junior high school seemed to get special attention when applying to the high school.
University entrance exams ("juken" 受験) are particularly hard and is often referred to as "exam hell" ("shiken jigoku" 試験地獄). Students who fail the "juken" become "rounin" (浪人), a term formerly used for masterless samurai.
Waiting for the results to be revealed from the tests. Another test will be held later on to give those that did not get into their first school of choice another chance.