Waddling Thunder describes what happened when one of his professors tried to change the exam from December 9th to a "floater" that students could take any day between the 8th and the 16th. To make his long story short, students complained, so the plan was scrapped. Coincidentally, one of my classes had a similar thing happen. The same thing, in fact. Professor wanted to make things easier for people by letting us take the exam whichever day we wanted -- and students were upset that they'd already made flight plans and couldn't take it the following week -- and that wasn't fair because other students would have more time to study. This doesn't really bother me as much as it bothers WT. I mean, he's right that at this point grades don't really count for all that much, and it's not like anything about the change would really mean anyone's grade is necessarily going to change anyway. But we're all smart people here, and given an extra week to study something, probably all of us could make productive use of the time and do a little better on the exam, and perhaps that would change the curve... and why change the rules midstream to make people worry that because they already made plans to leave on a certain day, that they might get slightly hurt on the curve. It's not really the way I feel -- I think giving us an extra week is more like torture than a gift; studying doesn't accomplish all that much and it's just not all that much fun to have an exam hanging over your head for an extra 7 days, so I'd rather get it out of the way at the beginning of exam period anyway, even if I know 5% less than I would if I had the extra time -- but I can reasonably see why other people would feel like that. I don't think it speaks badly to the ethos of this place or to the people, I really don't. It's just human nature.

P.S. Waddling Thunder has some interesting anecdotes from the interview process especially if you're looking to work at a firm overseas -- so if London be your wish, you should check it out.