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Lets just be clear for college students
- Thread starter macguy360
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Well - my experience _may_ be somewhat atypical. I'm working on my PhD in Computational Nuclear Engineering at MIT. At MIT the tests are all so damn hard you could have a whole week and work on it with your friends and it _still_ wouldn't matter. That's why they don't care if you use your book/notes/internet/iPad Pro lol.
I'm TA'ing for a class this semester where the professor makes each test so that an expert in the field who has been working on that material for the last 40 years still wouldn't be able to get above a B. The average on the last test was a 45% (that class has open book/notes/laptop AND internet AND dog AND whatever else you think might help you because you have no hope 🙂
But I'm sure that many schools are opening up to using laptops during tests because it's one of the main ways students take notes and work on homework these days... you just have to get a bit more "creative" with the tests ;-)
EDIT: BTW... there are classes here that literally have take home tests where you can work with friends... it doesn't help ;-)
mgipe
macrumors 6502a
Ah...the good old days at MIT. Brings back memories. 😱
Night Spring
macrumors P6
Lobwedgephil
macrumors 603
Ghost31
macrumors 68040
Also the perfect description for my girlfriend
sjleworthy
macrumors 68000
you describe your gf as a large curve? lol, hope she doesnt read these boards. if i described my wife like that my life would not be worth living!
Eh to be fair I definitely had some open book or 1 page of notes exams even in law school; this was only 5-6 years ago.
Let's face it, you never memorize in the real world and most times it would be in fact highly professionally irresponsible not to refer to reference materials and/or notes and try to do it all from memory. Half of the crap that they made you memorize to pass the Bar exam was worthless junk that you will either never use or is ancient law that doesn't even apply today.
I think that is the point of those types of exams; that memorizing useless crap doesn't make you "smarter." But one who can be organized with their notes or materials has some real life application if being organized in your career and being able to locate answers quickly and efficiently. After all,, if I dont remember something or dont know somethign the first thing I do is pick up the book (or online) and find the material and the answer; I don't wing it on half memorized stuff from years ago.
Right, basically a curve... but the curve is really kind of applied only to the final grade. Also it won't be a "hard" curve. Essentially, people getting within one standard deviation of the mean will get B's... if you're above that you might get an A and then there will be some long tail below that where people also get B's. You have to do very poorly to get a C (this is graduate level... so a C really means you didn't do much of anything).
The point for classes like this is not to get a good grade... but to learn how to think abstractly and reason about a new and very complex subject (reactor physics in this case).
[doublepost=1460121312][/doublepost]Since we're completely off topic I'll just mention that grades don't mean very much at MIT. MIT is for learning... not for getting grades. If you're an undergrad your whole freshman year is taken as pass/fail. Also, there is no "class ranking" or graduating "cum laude" or anything. If you make it through... then you made it through.
So: if you ever hear anyone say "I graduated first in my class from MIT" you know they are full of ******** and probably didn't even go here 🙂
BTW: this is a classic mistake made in the movies with characters that supposedly went to MIT. Even in Iron Man they claim Tony Stark graduated "summa cum laude" from MIT http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/iron_man_mit_87
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