<p>I hope I3stranger has got her wish, seeing that some of the finals were mind numbingly difficult( for e.g Biol 200).</p>
<p>Honestly, I've started to hate this trend I've seen with the exams- the midterms turn out to be fairly easy- the class average being in the high 70s and low 80s. </p>
<p>Then the questions for the finals turn out to be infinitely more difficult than the midterms. I mean, the midterms then give you false assumptions about yourself and the course! I would rather have it the other way around.</p>
<p>I agree with that to some extent. My statistics midterm (since it's a year-long course) yesterday morning was at least twice as hard as the quarter-term. All this time, I'd been getting 100% in the class till the midterm comes and blows my grade away. Screw that.</p>
<p>I had little sleep the night before, but I don't think that explains the difficulty of the exam compared to the assignments and the previous exam.</p>
<p>Which stats class was this, and who's teaching? </p>
<p>The reasoning behind harder finals is to get a nice spread of grades. If you make them too easy, the grades will be too high and a rote memorization kid who'll forget the material 3 seconds after the exam will be indistinguishable from a really smart student who can apply what was learned and solve problems never seen before. If the final grades are overall low, it's easier to adjust them up. Midterms may be made easier for many reasons, one would be that it's easier to grade correct answers than wrong ones (for partial marks), and in the middle of the semester, professors are busy with many other things (preparing classes, research, the middle of fall semester is grant application and reference letter writing season).</p>
<p>Biol 200 final exam = most bizarre and retarded exam I've ever taken. 10+ pages of fill in the blank and some doodling, not to mention that half of the material on there are just direct replicas of lecture powerpoints. Is problem solving/thinking a graduation requirement at McGill, or does it all depend on memorization?</p>
<p>l3tranger: Stop taking bird courses and stop complaining. And for the love of God please take a real stats course. You keep confusing anecdote with data...</p>
<p>Why would McGill-ers buy books? Half of my fall courses again state that only lecture material would be covered in exams and that even if it's in the textbook but not mentioned in class, that topic will not be tested. Wikipedia would suffice, not to mention it's free. Oh wait here is what I love the most about org chem 2: assigned textbook reading will also discuss beyond what is dealt with in class (which isn't required for finals of course). Now that's just thilly.</p>
<p>My engineering roommate's thermodynamics hw --> no calculus involved...</p>