<p>I don’t know about 3. gthopeful. While multiple choice may require less extrapolation and creative thinking, there is greater risk associated with it. I’ve seen gen. chem. exams from GT admittedly, and they are somewhat easier than ours (MC/short answer hybrids), but I imagine grades are lower due to a lack of partial credit. The bio MC exams (only one prof. offers MC/short answer hybrids and he’s really tough) here are pretty tough (only 30-35 questions), and the average for bio 141/142 is 2.5-2.6. I don’t think the intention is to make the tests easier. I think it’s to make grading the tests easier in Tech’s case. Probably too many students taking them. Same with bio. here, except some profs. are willing to grade papers. Bio 141/142 profs. have only undergrad. TAs I believe (the closest things we have to recitation is SI), so they must grade themselves. For some reason, the gen. chem. teachers don’t care as much about having to grade lots of papers because many of them are lecture track faculty whereas the bio profs do research.
I’ll agree about 1 and 2 though (though truancy seems to only be rampant in physics and calculus, and perhaps biochemistry b/c it’s so large). It seems that a lot of my peers won’t go if they are not doing that well in a class. They believe that the profs. don’t want to see students who are not doing well or that the teacher is tough because they do not like the students . I don’t know if that’s the attitude over there, but it’s a pretty stupid one, especially here where you pay a lot more for good access to the profs.</p>