One focus of their objections was a reading comprehension section that used text from “Call It Sleep,” a critically acclaimed 1934 novel by the American writer Henry Roth, which the students said was rife with archaic vocabulary. Their petition highlighted this passage as difficult to comprehend:

“Against the luminous sky the rays of her halo were spikes of darkness roweling the air; shadow flattened the torch she bore to a black cross against flawless light — the blackened hilt of a broken sword. Liberty.”

Those words are not lyrics from a song by a heavy metal band like Black Sabbath, but a reference to the Statue of Liberty.

The Abitur exams were created from a national pool of questions and distributed by the education ministry in Baden-Württemberg. The exam is Germany’s equivalent to the United Kingdom’s A-levels or France’s baccalaureate — the final hurdle for students leaving secondary school for university, a series of written and oral tests worth roughly one-third of their school-leaving grade.

The resulting grades are used for a system known as “numerus clausus” that rations admission to popular university programs. Those who wish to study a high-demand subject like medicine but fail to meet a required minimum score may be required to wait up to seven years for a place.

“The Abitur grades are the single most important selecting factor for getting into university,” said Rainer Bölling, an education expert who wrote a book on the history of the Abitur.

Mr. Bölling suggested that the test, which holds an important place in German culture, was becoming easier, as a bigger proportion of young people try to get into university. In 1960, 7 percent of school leavers took the test; in 2000, it was 37.2 percent; and in 2015, it was 53 percent, according to official figures.