<p>The questions can seem irrelevant/random sometimes and I don't feel like they really test the full knowledge of students. Sometimes I can't believe 90% of our grades are based on those 3 fifty minutes "testing" sessions to evaluate our entire years performance when they don't really accurate reflections of homework/class discussions. It seems like the instructors just pulled up some random selection of problems from the night before. </p>
<p>How do you most effectively study for college exams anyway? I am referring to math/sciences classes.</p>
<p>Have you tried going to office hours for the instructor and/or teaching assistant? Sometimes you can get a better idea of the way they are thinking & what items they think are important if you do make the effort.</p>
<p>Give an example of a test question, why do they seem irrelevant to you? Maybe your high school used to test you in an irrelevant way so now college seems so.</p>
<p>I hate how the teachers want low averages for their tests so that they have a wide spread of grades...but then don't curve them! And then they say "it's okay...even if you get a 60% on all of the tests and do your homework, you'll end up with a C"...I don't want a C!</p>
<p>Yea I feel your pain. My chemistry tests as a freshman are 20 mc each, and we have 3 of them. My calculus tests are 14-15 mc, and we have 3 of those as well. Even more crazy is my intro physics; 10 mc, only 2 of those in the semester. The only class which I believe has perfect exams that truly estimate a student's knowledge is in my intro to computer tools (matlab/excel) class. There are several free response and several mc which reflect accurately on the student. Too bad all exams aren't like this though. </p>
<p>So far in calc I've gotten a 67/72; the 67 is a B-, the 72 is a C. Not happy.</p>
<p>Ever heard of a negative curve?! I didn't study very hard for my Statistics midterm because the class is a joke and I haven't learned anything new all semester... next thing I know, she's telling us that she did a "negative curve" so the cutoff between an A and a B was 94%! I'd never even heard of such a thing and hadn't considered that it would be a possibility... I would've studied harder! Anyway, I have plenty of chances to redeem myself, so I'm not worried about my overall grade in the class... but come on... it's her own fault if she made the exam too easy!</p>
<p>Yeah, college grades do matter for your first job. Most people have to submit transcripts to employers, but it obviously depends on connections you make, internships you find, et cetera. They might not mean anything in the end.</p>
<p>Your grades can also affect the majors you're allowed to choose among & "schools" within the U you are able to be accepted at (e.g. engineering, business, education, nursing).<br>
Your instructors at the U can also be great references IF they think you have applied yourself in their course. Sometimes they will even be a link to a job or internship if you really impress them.</p>
<p>I just woke up from a nightmare: During the midterm, I accidentally copied the problem wrong on an epsilon-delta proof, thinking that x approached 0 instead of a, making it continuous. So, although I figure out the problem that I did correctly, I got 25 points knocked off my score like that, received a D, and was asked to move down to a lower-level sequence.</p>
<p>But it was a dream.</p>
<p>At least I hope it was; I receive the test back next week. Oh, I hate tests!</p>
<p>Depends on how you think of it. Epsilon-delta totally makes sense. You know the definition of the limit: "Given any epsilon positive, there exists a delta..." etc. By just reading the definition, "epsilon-delta" works well. I think you are just thinking about the y axis and the fact that it's the function delta-epsioln [ d(e)].</p>
<p>I'm not wrong, you know. Just google it. It comes up both ways.</p>
<p>sometimes you'll get a C in college... it's not that big of a deal. Better to not get one? Obviously, but don't stress about it.</p>
<p>and yes, curving grades down is rare, but it does happen. More at some schools than others.</p>
<p>ILoveBrown... if the professor made the exam harder then you would've got a lower grade because you would have scored lower in raw points. Instead you got a lower grade because it was curved down. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.</p>
<p>I'd rather get a B because I did moderately well on a difficult exam than get a B because I did extremely well (but not perfectly) on a really easy exam.</p>