How do prep schools test students at the end of a semester? Are they multiple-choice or short answer questions?
There is no pattern. Every teacher decides what type of test to give and may/will give different types of assessments even within the same class – essays, take home, projects, multiple-choice, short-answer, presentations, etc. Our son has experienced all of these and combos of these for end-of-term exams.
Agree with @ChoatieMom although I’ve never encountered a 100% MC test.
Most of my DDs term finals were papers. Her French exams are a mix of short answers and usually longish essay in French.
My daughter goes to The Putney School, a progressive school where they don’t do final exams. Yes there is a ton of work, with papers, tests and presentations from all classes…but instead of final exams they spend 2 weeks (twice a year) diving into an area of interest both academically and creatively. The results are pretty wild.
^Based on this comment and looking at who my kids have become and the interests they’ve developed, I wish Putney had been on our radar back in the application days.
@jdewey My DS’s day school does a version of this. The weeks between Presidents’ weekend and Spring Break are spent in electives, which are chosen by the teachers. Each kids gets to pick 6, at least 2 of which must be from the Arts options. Math and Foreign Language are the only two regular classes which continue throughout. The workload ends up being the same, but by attending classes based on mutual interests and not grade or achievement level, you get a pretty happy student body in the middle of winter 
Ugh final exams are usually papers for humanities subjects and mc/sa for math and sa for science.
…this is what I would do if I got to do project week (sadly no video of the results!) http://www.putneyschool.org/content/nate-15-studies-pyrotechnics-project-week
Exeter’s on trimesters, so finals cover no more than 10 weeks of work and are often (if I’m remembering correctly) just a final test. I’m trying to remember if I ever saw a multiple choice test question in the stuff he brought home at the end of the year–it seems like they were all made up of problem sets, short answers, and essays.