<p>In my email should I just quietly request a regrade, or should I in addition briefly outline why I think some of the grader’s objections are unfair?</p>
<p>request a regrade. Say that you feel that certain elements were not graded correctly and you would like to have a second opinion.</p>
<p>If they say yes, then elaborate</p>
<p>comm 103 does count if you’re going premed though</p>
<p>^ as an English class. yes</p>
<p>anyone know why it is COMM now and not ENGL 103? as it was when I took it?</p>
<p>I submitted nothing too. 
But hey, I can now say that I neither passed nor failed that silly exam. It’s a joke class as others have said.</p>
<p>I’ve really enjoyed this thread. For well over a year I’ve followed Rice somewhat closely as my son went from high school junior to O-week participant this week. And up until now all the info has been pretty consistently positive. So hearing the perspectives of students who think the comp exam is a joke has been kind of new and intriguing.</p>
<p>But as I’ve absorbed the info it mostly makes sense. Why shouldn’t Rice have some part of the curriculum which isn’t working that well? I’m sure there are some silly things at every top school.</p>
<p>The part I don’t get - and I really don’t mean to be critical at all here - is how at least two posters chose to just hand in a blank paper. Did you worry at all about the effect? If my son had suggested doing that I would have told him that he still hadn’t registered for classes, that they could still withhold admission, and if I were the Dean in charge of this project and I had a choice between someone who handed in a blank paper and the top guy on the waiting list, I’d choose the waiting list guy in a second. Again, I hope that the above doesn’t sound critical; you guys were right and I was too nervous, but how did you know you could be confident that nothing bad would happen, that if anything, the only consequence is that you get a shot at an easy A?</p>
<p>I ought to mention that my son handled this so far on the other side of the continuum, which is part of why this is so interesting to me. He wouldn’t let my wife or me even glance at the articles until after he was done. He put an awful lot of time and energy into his essay. And when I asked him why he was working so hard at it, what was the benefit to him, he told me the benefit would be that he’d be in a smarter class with better writers. And he was elated when he found out he did pass.</p>
<p>IIRC, the directions for the comp exam stated that the only drawback for doing poorly or not doing it at all were that you would have to take the class (don’t quote me on that, I’m not positive). But really even if that wasn’t explicitly stated, it takes something really serious to get rescinded, especially during the summer, such as discovering you lied on your application, plagiarised, committed a felony, etc. As for reasons people don’t take the test, some people figure they aren’t good writers and will end up taking the class anyway, so why bother taking the test? Also some people forget, or are just lazy, etc.</p>
<p>^^that makes sense, wasn’t aware of the instructions. As I said my son kept me far away</p>
<p>yes. it is clearly stated that failing the test will result in taking the class and nothing else. The reasons vary as to why people turned in a blank sheet, but why should that be a problem? They are ready and willing to live with the consequences.</p>
<p>We have had weekends at Rice where we had to pick which of the classes homework we were going to do because of time. The one worth the least sometimes never got done. (thats what you get when they assign 4 midterms and 3 problem sets and 3 papers simultaneously)</p>
<p>@bird rock: that is really good of your son, and I have no doubt he will do well at Rice. I chose to not even attempt it because I was working a 45 hour summer job (drumming up cash for my 1st college semester) and I liked my free time a bit too much!</p>
<p>Btw, I emailed them and they responded:
</p>
<p>excellent. Now we know for sure that emailing them is a good way to proceed.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>dang man early november? that’s a long time to regrade a paper</p>
<p>probably get a ton of regrades ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, I got the same email.</p>
<p>Hey so does anyone know how they want us to cite the articles on this exam? I am going to take it in early June (pretty soon), and I don’t want to spend hours on the exam only to not pass because of citation errors. Do they just want MLA parenthetical citations? This is how we format quotes for papers in my senior AP english class:</p>
<p>Blank believes that “quote quote quote quote quote” (Source 45).</p>
<p>just take comm103, it is an extremely easy class</p>
<p>yeah i guess i’ll try my best but not be too sad if i dont pass. is comm103 a lot of work though? because i don’t want to be writing tons of english papers for hw. writing long papers isn’t really up my alley (i’m more of a mathy/engineering problem set type of guy)</p>
<p>Does anyone know the answer to PeteyW’s question? The composition exam begins June 3rd and I’d really like to be prepared. In my high school, we’ve learned MLA advanced and APA citation formats. We have also become relatively well-versed in writing research papers. I would hate to fail an exam that, if better informed, I have the capacity to pass. </p>
<p>There’s definitely nothing wrong with taking COMM 103; from what I’ve heard, it appears that the reason students is not that they are incapable but rather that the formatting of their papers did not match with Rice’s requirements (even though Rice doesn’t outline a specific method for citation).</p>
<p>I’m fairly certain I used MLA formatting on my comp exam essay, and I passed (somehow).</p>