<p>Wow that was tough</p>
<p>idk i couple of my friends said it was made easy. im not in that class though so not really sure</p>
<p>They probably took 1920. That or they're very smart</p>
<p>Yeah it was a killer... at least its curved and you get 1/3 of the points back if you correct your mistakes</p>
<p>that was the worst hour and a half of my life. i literally only fully answered one question, and i don't think it was even partially correct. thank god for the 1/3 points we can make up.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if they are going to post the test and SOLUTIONS online?</p>
<p>They are going to post the answers but not the solutions because we have to do corrections. Everyone will get their exam back on Monday.</p>
<p>Study harder.</p>
<p>lol Cayuga, I understand your whole ideology on not whining and junk, but I took this prelim as well, and no amount of extra studying would have made any of us do better. We were even allowed to make a "cheat sheet" and it made no difference at all.</p>
<p>There were some TA's that teach our course that couldn't answer some of the questions in the time allotted.</p>
<p>I will be surprised if the mean is above a 50.</p>
<p>If it's curved, then there's really no logic to whining. Everyone takes the same test.</p>
<p>The mean will be less than 40%, I can almost guarantee it.</p>
<p>I'll say it again: study harder.</p>
<p>I got destroyed on my first math prelim at Cornell as well (Math 221). It happens. You learn how to be a better student.</p>
<p>I agree Red-- study harder and learn how to study on the college level. But, as a proffesor at a college (NOT Cornell but with a child at Cornell), I do not agree with preparing an exam that will result in a mean/median in the 40's or 50's. To me, that means you did not prepare your students or prepared an exam above your students abilities.</p>
<p>If you taught them well, at least a few of the students should be able to receive an A, and a few more a B, etc. Obviously, an ideal average is in the 70's ( a C which is average).</p>
<p>If the average/median is in the 40's or 50', I personally think the professor is doing a bad job. Either he/she is not teaching well or expecting students to learn more on their own. </p>
<p>Admittedly college is about maturing and self dicipline. But if the student can teach the subject to themselves, why pay the big bucks, ie the professors
salary, etc??</p>
<p>Professors do not need to prove they have more knowledge then their students. Students know they do.</p>
<p>This is the first time I'm disagreeing with you Cayuga...I believe that NO amount of preparation could've prepared me for this prelim...it was just THAT hard...mean of around 30 wouldn't surprise me at this point...</p>
<p>I doubt the mean will be in 40's and there's NO WAY it'll be in the 30's. The hardest test I took was my Phys213 final. It, not coincidentally, had the lowest mean of any exam I took as well. The mean was a 51 with a low spread of about 12 (most SD's are around 14).</p>
<p>I'm really curious what the mean will be.</p>
<p>I'd have to agree that no amount of studying would have prepared me better. I spent the last week studying/reviewing at which point I took the previous exams (with the most recent being last year's exam) and easily scored 95% on all of them. There were a bunch of '08 practice problems posted too, which I also breezed through. I figured those problems were too easy, so I did something like the last 2 problems of each section (the ones that are generally regarded as the tough problems I suppose) to prepare, and even that didn't help. </p>
<p>The prelim itself was just a curve ball and it seemed like the difficultly ramped up tenfold in a single year, but that's college I suppose. The first two problems were totally unrelated to the topics we had covered and the remainder of the test just took so long to do and was so prone to tiny errors. I definitely made some stupid errors where I shouldn't have, but I came out of that test knowing I easily got half the test wrong and with partial credit, I'll probably pull out a 60.</p>
<p>I too doubt the mean will be in the 30s or 40s. Something above 50 sounds reasonable, but I spoke to countless people who only did 1/2 to 3/4ths of the test and aren't even confident they got that much correct so I have no doubts it will be low. There's no reason to worry because we get babied and get 1/3rd of the points we lost back (which is 10-15 points depending on how you did) and a curve on top of that. It's just a wake up call for the next test, which we will be prepared for assuming it's not another curve ball.</p>
<p>I have heard about this exam.
it sounds scary.
makes me glad I am in the regular normal Calc 2 for nothing much in particular.</p>
<p>Cayuga, while I haven't actually seen the test as I'm in 1920 which had a pretty easy first prelim, from what my friends tell me the test in question was ridiculous, well beyond what would be reasonably expected for an undergrad, even at cornell. Apparently the first thing my friend's lecturer said during their next lecture after was, I didn't right the test, its not my fault, which indicates that the test was bad. That said it will be curved, so there is no reason to freak out until people see where they are in relation to the mean.</p>
<p>I heard the other day that the highest grade was a 40.</p>
<p>the mean was a 36 lol</p>