Comments on: Goldilocks Final

By: AnonymousSnowboarder

AnonymousSnowboarder — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:12:55 +0000

My favorite exam of my school years was the Soph. QM class. I got a 28 and was totally horrified until the Prof. (an elderly man who was probably around in the early days of QM) put up the curve and I found I had a B. Thank goodness for relativity!

By: Yvette

Yvette — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:03:43 +0000

Ha, I definitely would have gone for an out of class exam myself. Yes, I know they’re supposed to be easier, but I was just so abysmally AWFUL at taking them and I never figured out why I don’t test well (like seriously, I’d do well on the homeworks and then fail the exams). Some weird quirk that was beyond frustrating because I’m obviously good enough at physics to get an M.S. in it!

Funny thing tho is my dad has already made me promise to never give a take home final when I become a professor. Apparently back in his day he was made to take many an incredibly awful take home because per him “there’s nothing worse than spending all day on an exam and then being dead tired but unable to go to sleep because you know you’re not done.”

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:11:11 +0000

Dear All… Thanks for the comments… The good news is that it seemed to go well… the students seemed to enjoy it, more or less, and everyone did a good stab at the exam, as far as I can see so far, so a success of sorts.

-cvj

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:09:40 +0000

No problem!

-cvj

By: chris vj

chris vj — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:06:19 +0000

Sorry about that! I realized only after posting.

-chris

By: Ele Munjeli

Ele Munjeli — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:50:21 +0000

I just finished my finals, and I did enjoy all of them. But part of that is because my school has no grades, just evaluations, and anyone who really bombs can retake the exam in most subjects. I was still working on alternative solutions to the last question in my programming exam this evening, even though I turned the test in at 11:30 this morning. It was really just an interesting problem that could be solved in a variety of ways…

By: Clifford

Clifford — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:28:14 +0000

Dear cvj,

Consider using another identifier to avoid confusion, by the way.

As for your request…No. I do not do that.

-cvj

By: cvj

cvj — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:05:32 +0000

You should post your final here, I’d like to see how I would do with it. I’d like to see what I remember.

All the best,
cvj

By: robert

robert — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:30:05 +0000

One of the few exams I really enjoyed was for an Oxford math MSc. A set of problems was issued a week before the candidates were examined individually and orally on questions they selected by a panel of the local good and great. The whole thing was remarkably cheery, with the examiners squabbling amongst themselves on how they thought the various problems should have been dispatched. At the end the candidates were told whether they had passed before they left the room; those who failed were then required to undergo a more conventional closed book in-class test. As the examiners had to then set and mark this it was rare indeed for anyone to be asked to sit it. Such laxity would not be tolerated these days I’m sure. Nonetheless it was fun.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:28:57 +0000

I too typically enjoyed exams, although I always felt a bit guilty about it when I saw how miserable most of my fellow students were.

Third year quantum mechanics stands out in my memory (it was only six years ago, I suppose). The previous exams, to which we were allowed access to help us study, were all along very similar lines, but on the day of our exam we were confronted by quite a different paper. It required the same knowledge and set of skills to answer, of course, but I came out of it feeling like I’d learnt something new. With few exceptions, the others came out bitching and moaning about how they “weren’t prepared for that”.

By: candace

candace — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:42:32 +0000

Straight up: If I’d had the chance to have take home exams, I would have my MSc now.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:21:37 +0000

My favorite exam of all time was the Putnam math competition. It was 6 hours, 12 gloriously difficult math questions, but all of them superbly interesting. About 3 hours in I noticed something was deeply wrong with the situation – I was so happy and excited to be taking that test!

I didn’t do well either! In fact, I did unspeakably bad. But that didn’t take away from its fun.

Of course, I didn’t have a grade riding on it, either…