<p>He wasn’t accusing or questioning you NS.</p>
<p>Why are you guys finding it so hard to believe he got such a high grade? My brother is in med school and he has like a 98% in almost all his classes because he studies a lot. It’s not that hard to understand.</p>
<p>NewStudent: </p>
<p>I am highly dubious of the effectiveness of your strategy. First of all, if you know enough of the stuff to write it down on a blank exam sheet, then why not just use that information to answer real questions? </p>
<p>Second, how is your strategy even feasible? Many students take 20-30 pages of notes for Calculus for the whole term. How do you copy that on to an exam with only 10-15 pages? </p>
<p>Explain how you would find the second derivative of f(x)=x^x using your method…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It works for me, and I tend to forget this and question myself once I see the actual questions. Secondly, I am really good at calculus. It just makes sense to me, and I don’t need to write down anything. It just flows.</p>
<p>I would find the derivative of f(x) = x^x the same way that you would… <em>is confused by what you were trying to get at</em></p>
<p>Do you need help differentiating f(x) = x^x?? I can help you if you’d like!</p>
<p>^
What I meant is your strategy is to write out notes related to Calculus. So for that particular question f"(x), which notes from which sections would you use?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No it’s not. I don’t write out notes for calculus… That’s probably the only one that I DON’T write notes for. I write notes for Chem, Biochem, Physics, Psych, etc., but not Calc.</p>
<p>30 pages of notes for calculus? I can fit the entire Calculus I on a notecard.</p>
<p>There are 20 derivatives and 20 integral identities you need to know, maybe write down some of the trig identities… A bunch of them, are completely needless to even study. Then some of the slightly more difficult ones you use so much that you don’t need to write them down at all. </p>
<p>You should know how to do optimization, area, related rates, limits, etc. without notes. Those are processes you should be learning how to do. In a calculus class for example, the writing on the test would just be some of the more difficult identities to remember, not the processes to solve the problems. If you need to rely on writing notes quickly on the back of your test to know the process to solve a problem, then you’re hopeless.</p>
<p>My high school physics teacher always encouraged writing down any formulas or constants you might have difficulty remembering at the beginning of the test.</p>
<p>Check your logic at every step (in other words, “does this make sense?”). I’ll use linear algebra as an example. So say you have to find the inverse of a matrix, and you do so. A way to check if its right would be to multiply it by the original matrix A and seeing what you get. If you get the identity matrix, you’re golden. Because by definition A inverse time A will be the identity matrix.</p>
<p>And another example, from organic chem this time: well say there’s a primary carbon and your nucleophile is HCN, will SN2 occur? So say for example you say yes, what does that imply? That implies that a poor nucleophile can undergo SN2 at a primary carbon. So use a test case; water, also a poor nucleophile. Will SN2 happen with water at a primary carbon? No, it won’t. So you know there won’t be a rxn in the case of HCN. </p>
<p>If you didn’t understand my examples the general idea is to think up answer -> think about what implications your answer has -> test those implications on things you know for sure.</p>
<p>P.S to the guy bragging about his grades; spare us, just go yell it off the roof of your college dorm if you really need everyone to know.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure they meant that one or a few people got 100% even when the CLASS average for the test was 50%. They were on your side, saying that there is often one or a few people who do really well even if many are struggling.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to get a 100% on a Calc test if you go to a top 10 school. END OF STORY.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please show me the scientific evidence proving this.</p>
<p>… Oh, wait; did you mean that it would be impossible for YOU to get a 100% on a calculus test at a top 10 school? Because that I could understand.</p>