Hey Eden,
After talking to Cyndi we'll broach this topic with professors at the next professor's meeting and ask that the NEWT and OWL exams be made a little bit more reasonable, acknowledging that it can be difficult to do them all in the time spam.
As well, NEWTs and OWLs may move up next year (so that they're started the week between lesson 6 and exams, which is traditionally a week off) which will give students more time. Traditionally, OWLs and NEWTs did have extra time for completion on HNZ - but it proved difficult to define or maintain because of how crammed the end of the year often is. Moving their starting forward instead of pushing when they end back may resolve that problem.
That all said, also remember that the Hogwarts system is not made so that students take everything. Hermione tried to take everything and couldn't in her schedule for third year. I suspect, NEWT level courses are a little bit more taxing and thusly difficult to accomplish in character, let alone out of character. While I have always held the opinion that lessons/exams/etc. should not be a chore for the OOC person (testing their OOC knowledge of things etc. ) I am constantly frustrated that people forget the limits of their characters. Could a character handle that many courses? When you fill out their exams, is it as a character - sometimes getting things wrong despite knowing the answer OOC? Etc. So it's difficult to balance the two concepts, both for professors creating the exams and for you guys taking them.
