<p>getting absolutely destroyed and demoralized after every prelim</p>
<p>ajp... thats a little harsh lol</p>
<p>wow...are they that bad? Should we like review before the prelims?</p>
<p>you'll seeee lol. Yes you should study for them...they are exams lol. The amount of studying really depends on the class though... some I study only the day before, some I study a lot.</p>
<p>Prelims are not that bad. If you do all the work for the course I'm pretty sure you'll at least get average. It's really hard to predict how well you're going to do here unless you already go to a top prep school. SAT scores don't really tell you much since everyone's SATs are pretty high. I even know one NMF here who was put on academic leave twice.</p>
<p>My advice would be to take first semester easy and don't take advanced courses like genetics.</p>
<p>Cornell Plantations.</p>
<p>from an ancient Cornellie ...</p>
<ul>
<li><p>finding someone to help keep you warm on winter nights (you'll never be a place with such a high concentration of people with whom you are compatible)</p></li>
<li><p>meeting some of the best friends you will ever meet</p></li>
<li><p>tray sliding on lib slope</p></li>
<li><p>running at night in the middle of snow storm </p></li>
<li><p>actually running around the campus and Ithaca anytime </p></li>
<li><p>midnight snow storm touch football (preferably co-ed)</p></li>
<li><p>being introduced to lacrosse</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell hockey </p></li>
<li><p>the variety of courses </p></li>
<li><p>having my intellectual curiosity engaged</p></li>
<li><p>finding an academic/career path that I LOVED ... and had never heard of before I went to Cornell ... and which is only offered at a limited number of schools</p></li>
<li><p>getting my butt whipped academically ... which made me grow up academically</p></li>
<li><p>the totally amazing cohorts you have</p></li>
<li><p>a mid night check-in on the architecture students</p></li>
<li><p>the architect's Dragon parade in the spring</p></li>
<li><p>subs from the truck</p></li>
<li><p>being at a place big enough for virtually everyone to find their place ... in my case having a great time with a ton of friends which did not involve either drinking of the frat scene.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What's a prelim? (500th post...yay!)</p>
<p>Prelim is basically a mid-term exam usually worth anywhere from 15%-25% of your total grade (most courses have either two or three of them).</p>
<p>Yeah, Prelims are no fun. It's sort of a right of passage to completely fail one your first semester at Cornell. I knew people who aced the first one only to bomb the second... it's a bonding experience!</p>
<p>Nothing says 'fun' like a 1,000 person Chemistry class where over half the people are going to get a B- or worse.</p>
<p>What I like best about Cornell is how intense it is. No matter what you're involved in, people probably view it as intense - and there really is a lot of bonding that comes with griping about how much work there is left to be done, or how little sleep you've gotten in the past (week/month/semester).</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Chem 208 I'm assuming?</p>
<p>The median grade is actually closer to a flat B. The MEAN grade is going to be ~2.8 because on every exam, it's a standard bell curve with a tail trailing off the lower end, so in the end, the mean grade is slightly lower than the median grade</p>
<p>The tail off the lower half is generally due to people who end up scoring 5-30 points out of 100 when the exam mean is 65 or 66 (the means for chem 208's prelims this previous spring 2007).</p>
<p>In all honesty, scoring 5-30/100 on any exam when the mean is mid 60's, std. dev. 15 or 17 does not indicate a lack of ability to understand the material but rather a (severe) lack of motivation</p>
<p>Still... I thank those people because it is partially due to them that the mean/median grades are lower so I get a slightly better grade :p</p>
<p>ooo a prelim's a midterm? lol sry i thought it was like a placemet exam...hmm...so are there placement exams? And do people study for them?</p>
<p>there are placement exams, they are all during orientation week. I know some ILR math exams are online that you can look over, other than that it's really about what you know about the subject</p>
<p>Yeah, prelim is what we call midterms. I think the idea is that they are 'preliminary' to a final exam.</p>