We’d like to announce one recent change you might not have noticed but that many will be glad to see: the waiting period between attempts for regular certificate exams is now 7 days rather than 14 days.

Why 7 days? Well, our resident political scientist set up a ranked-order* voting poll so that we could collectively choose among 3, 5, 7, 10, and 14 days. The rest is history, and a fine example of democracy at work…literally. For the curious, our goal is to encourage study and revision between attempts while avoiding actually discouraging students from coming back to finish the test. Seven days seems long enough to discourage people from guessing their way to success and short enough to keep people feeling welcome.

The delay between attempts for proctored exams taken for college credit opportunities remains 14 days, but we plan to tackle the question of whether to change that, too, soon.

Many thanks to the several students over the years who have suggested a change in the waiting period and to the latest student to make the request (we won’t name names without permission, but they know who they are).

*It’s an election year in the U.S. — and what an election! Want to learn more about the ranked-order voting that we don’t use to choose our President or Congress? Our poll-master suggests the following: