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Comment by whinenot | Hacker News Reader

>"Exam" isn't commonly used in American English.

Huh? Is this a homeschool trend? Final exams are the cornerstone of US secondary and tertiary education.

I grew up in ~6 different states in 9 schools in the US during the 1990s and 2000s, and we did not have final exams from Kindergarten through 12th grade, other than Advanced Placement (AP) exams.

You typically take tests at various points in time during the school year up to 12th grade, but entire course year tests labeled as "exams" did not happen until university, or AP exams if you took AP courses in high school.

Exam is definitely used in American English, though.

I had final exams in the US, in 2 different states, in both public and private schools. I have 2 kids, and 16-odd neices and nephews in 5 states, from 2nd to 12th grade in both public and private schools. Everyone talked about final exams. I think they get 'officially' called other things; in my state they're called Milestone Assessments, but they sure sound like a final exam to me.

"Georgia Milestones is a single assessment system that consists of end-of-grade measures in English language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8, end-of-grade measures in science in grades 5 and 8, end-of-grade measure in social studies in grade 8, and end-of-course measures for specified high school courses."

Interesting. I did not go to school in Georgia, but various states in the Midwest and Northeast, and I do not recall any year end cumulative test. If I recall, we got a grade each quarter (or half) and then that was averaged for the final grade.

Maybe it's a regional thing. I definitely had cumulative final exams in GA & FL in the 70s and early 80s. The new generation are in the South and West, and while I don't know all the details of each child's school, the wailing and gnashing of teeth about 'final exams' is consistent across all of them[1]. Since we don't really have national standards in the US for such things, it's shouldn't be a surprise that there could be differences in how grades are handled.

[1] To be fair, the kids could just be using 'exam' and interchangeably with 'test' and it isn't a capstone for the year. But that still belies the assertion that 'exam' isn't used much in the US.

The word "exam" isn't really used in American English. Tests are definetly a thing in the US.

> The word "exam" isn't really used in American English

Maybe there is some specific narrow regional or other dialect where this is true, but it is ludicrously wrong as a generalization of American English.

Well, in the parts of the country I was educated in we had exams, and I would consider the word to be a normal part of people's vocabulary

I grew up in the Cincinnati area and spent a large portion of time in North Carolina. I now live in central Ohio. “Exam” is definitely a word that gets used wherever I’ve lived. Examples have already been brought up — final exams, AP exams, actuarial exams, comprehensive exams, etc.

Exam's used in American English, plenty. It tends to connote something a bit more serious or formal than a test, but I don't think you'd get much of a difference in reaction just using the two interchangeably, in most contexts. At worst, you'd come off a bit pretentious, using "exam" to describe lesser tests.

"Test" dominates in primary and secondary school, "exam" becoming more common in post-secondary education and for professional certifications et c., but both occur in both contexts.

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