Hundreds of them are rising with the sparrows to secure their favourite study spots at the institution's libraries, queuing for up to half an hour to ensure being among the first through the doors.
The main information services building, which generally has study spaces for about 2200 students, plus extra seating for a few more at exam time, opens each weekday morning at 8am and closes at 11pm. Yesterday, as they had every day for the past week or so, the first students were on the doorsteps by 7.30am, lending services co-ordinator Tina Broderick said.
As 8am approached, numbers had swelled to an estimated 250 outside the main entrance and another 150 at the west door.
"We draw a bigger crowd than [Prime Minister] Helen Clark did when she was on campus on Monday," one staff member quipped as he watched the crowd building up.
When the doors opened most of the students dashed up the stairs and made a beeline for tables and cubicles on the first floor.
It would have been a similar scene when the doors opened at other libraries such as the law library, the medical library and the science library, Ms Broderick said.
Even with the temporary extra seating, all the libraries were packed throughout the day during mid-year and end-of-year exams, she said.
"We're open all year, but the students know exam time is crunch time."
Students could stay as long as they liked, she said, but staff moved their gear on if they deserted their posts for an unreasonably long period.
End-of-year exams began yesterday for about 12,700 undergraduate students and continue until November 8.
A total of 615 exam papers are being sat in 25 rooms on the Dunedin campus, 25 venues throughout New Zealand and in some 35 venues overseas, including Alkmaar in the Netherlands, Helsinki in Finland, Masan in South Korea and Winnipeg in Canada.
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