Hi Oliver — thanks for the feedback! I agree with your general point here but want to flag a couple things on our end:
Currently we are still approving travel grants (for all conferences from any location), albeit at a more limited capacity than we were approving in 2022.
The point here also stands somewhat for our other conferences, and if we were to move the London conference to say October, we’d then need to move our other conferences around. This would likely position some conference in April/May/June (which is exam season in other countries too), especially as we generally like to host conferences in warmer seasons.
Open to it for 2025, though looks like at least Oxford will still have exams then (exams often stretch until 1–2 weeks after the end of term). But early July might work and we can look into what dates we can get when we start booking.
Ok, this makes a lot of sense! I wasn’t sure if it was even a consideration.
However, why not the US in May/June? My impression was that finals hold a lot less weight there than in the UK, and the US academic system weighs grades a lot less in general. People care a lot about exams in the UK.
It’s possible we should move the US event to May/June, though it’s not obvious to me that that’s the best move as finals still do have some weight there — I know it’s less than the UK but I don’t know that people’s behavior is going to shift that much if an exam season is worth 50% of their grade vs 100%.
The US also has more potential attendees in general than the UK, which I think counts for something here. There are also just other downsides to shifting our conference schedule around too much, and most of our attendees aren’t students anyway.
Ah, I did not realize the US ones are larger, this also makes sense.
I think my final skepticism is that US schools end much earlier than UK schools. I don’t think they have finals in late May/early June (except maybe Stanford?). So I’m skeptical that there isn’t a way to do this so that all final exams are avoided?
Hi Oliver — thanks for the feedback! I agree with your general point here but want to flag a couple things on our end:
Currently we are still approving travel grants (for all conferences from any location), albeit at a more limited capacity than we were approving in 2022.
The point here also stands somewhat for our other conferences, and if we were to move the London conference to say October, we’d then need to move our other conferences around. This would likely position some conference in April/May/June (which is exam season in other countries too), especially as we generally like to host conferences in warmer seasons.
What if you just pushed it back one month—to late June?
Open to it for 2025, though looks like at least Oxford will still have exams then (exams often stretch until 1–2 weeks after the end of term). But early July might work and we can look into what dates we can get when we start booking.
Ok, this makes a lot of sense! I wasn’t sure if it was even a consideration.
However, why not the US in May/June? My impression was that finals hold a lot less weight there than in the UK, and the US academic system weighs grades a lot less in general. People care a lot about exams in the UK.
It’s possible we should move the US event to May/June, though it’s not obvious to me that that’s the best move as finals still do have some weight there — I know it’s less than the UK but I don’t know that people’s behavior is going to shift that much if an exam season is worth 50% of their grade vs 100%.
The US also has more potential attendees in general than the UK, which I think counts for something here. There are also just other downsides to shifting our conference schedule around too much, and most of our attendees aren’t students anyway.
Ah, I did not realize the US ones are larger, this also makes sense.
I think my final skepticism is that US schools end much earlier than UK schools. I don’t think they have finals in late May/early June (except maybe Stanford?). So I’m skeptical that there isn’t a way to do this so that all final exams are avoided?
In Canada my final exams finished in April