Negative Marks or How the School System Kicked me in the Nuts
- Thread starter asmidir
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Not when they count blank answers as a wrong. To discourage guessing it should be left as a 0. By counting both blank answers and wrong answers as the same -.25%, it encourages guessing. Why leave it blank when it counts against you anyways?Arfonious said:
Yeah, because the world wants Doctors who go HALF of their exams right.
Most exams have a pass requirement of above 65% anyway.
You failed, and that sucks for you. But don't blame the system.
Most exams have a pass requirement of above 65% anyway.
You failed, and that sucks for you. But don't blame the system.
It's very, very simple.
Knowing half the answers is not good enough to pass the test.
End of debate..
Knowing half the answers is not good enough to pass the test.
End of debate..
Eh, it's ranked highly in Medical and Criminal Justice, but 90% is an A in the States. 80% is B, 70% is C, 60% is D, and anything lower is F. F and D are considered failing, C is considering failing in the higher-ranked schools, B is considered just barely scratching by in those that don't accept C. But for mine, you're expected to get an A in all subjects that relate to your major and B in your minor/electives. Any less than that and you get to take the course over.asmidir said:
No, it wasn't, and folks who don't study don't deserve passing grades.MagunBFP said:
But that's not the point, Mr. Highandmighty, and if you stopped to think for two seconds before switching to snide mode you'd realize that people have varying strengths and weaknesses. For example, my grade average at uni hovers around 1.7 (or B+, if you will), so I'm donig reasonably well, yet there are some exams I've only passed by the skin of my teeth, despite studying for weeks on end; failing a test like that even though you did the very best you could because of a retarded marking system is WRONG. It's the very epitome of inappropriate negative reinforcement.
And before you launch into another snarky response, save yourself the time, because I'm not even remotely willing to argue that point - it stands, as far as I'm concerned.
It's a bit odd that they would give the penalty for both skipping the question and answering it incorrectly, but other than that it's the basic SAT model. That said, given that you only needed a 50% to pass even with the penalty bringing the convention score to a 62.5% I would hardly call it unfair. They set a low bar, and you still ran into it.
You think that's bad:
at one of my colleges we were on a forced curve of 2.7. In a typical class, as an example, there'd be one slot for an A+. Highest grade would get it.
If you did almost as well, stellar even, but not quite as good as the person ahead of you, no matter how great your paper or exam results, you did not get an A+ as the 'slot' was used up by the person ahead of you. No A+ for second place.
If there was an A+, and there always was, then the lowest grade got an F - no matter how good their performance. If you did well, but were comparatively the worst in the class, you got an F. This was graduate level, so even the worst of us at least did well. I saw some smart people flunk.
F did not mean you didn't know the subject at all, like it does in most circles - it just meant that your classmates all knew it better.
Very competitive system. 275 (roughly) started the journey w/me to get this degree, and just over a hundred didn't make it to graduate alongside me. Round-about 1/3 got weeded out, and this was pretty typical. They didn't all fall off due to being weeded out though, some few left due to real life problems and such.
One advantage of such a system, however, is that it was really easy to figure out your relative standing in your class, even before seeing an exact figure. Prospective employers would even some times ask graduates for this info and consider it when judging you (that is to say, rather than asking you 'what were your grades', you'd often be asked 'what was your class ranking').
There are variations on the forced curve system, mind you, and ours wasn't done exactly like other schools, but pretty close. (I think many just say that if you give a grade below the median, you have to give one above it, rather than 1 A grade forces you to give 1 F, like we did. But I can't say for certain as this was the only school I ever attended w/a forced curve. Plus, we'd limit the # of the extreme grades in advance - * at most there will be 1 A+ * being typical. So it was guaranteed in every class, in advance, that 1 person would get top spot, and 1 person would fail.
at one of my colleges we were on a forced curve of 2.7. In a typical class, as an example, there'd be one slot for an A+. Highest grade would get it.
If you did almost as well, stellar even, but not quite as good as the person ahead of you, no matter how great your paper or exam results, you did not get an A+ as the 'slot' was used up by the person ahead of you. No A+ for second place.
If there was an A+, and there always was, then the lowest grade got an F - no matter how good their performance. If you did well, but were comparatively the worst in the class, you got an F. This was graduate level, so even the worst of us at least did well. I saw some smart people flunk.
F did not mean you didn't know the subject at all, like it does in most circles - it just meant that your classmates all knew it better.
Very competitive system. 275 (roughly) started the journey w/me to get this degree, and just over a hundred didn't make it to graduate alongside me. Round-about 1/3 got weeded out, and this was pretty typical. They didn't all fall off due to being weeded out though, some few left due to real life problems and such.
One advantage of such a system, however, is that it was really easy to figure out your relative standing in your class, even before seeing an exact figure. Prospective employers would even some times ask graduates for this info and consider it when judging you (that is to say, rather than asking you 'what were your grades', you'd often be asked 'what was your class ranking').
There are variations on the forced curve system, mind you, and ours wasn't done exactly like other schools, but pretty close. (I think many just say that if you give a grade below the median, you have to give one above it, rather than 1 A grade forces you to give 1 F, like we did. But I can't say for certain as this was the only school I ever attended w/a forced curve. Plus, we'd limit the # of the extreme grades in advance - * at most there will be 1 A+ * being typical. So it was guaranteed in every class, in advance, that 1 person would get top spot, and 1 person would fail.
Its there to discourage wild guessing. If you don't know your stuff, BSing around hurts more than it helps. I see no particular problem with it, particularly since 50% passing is extremely generous.
The same goes for my own field, engineering, to an even greater degree. We kill people by the hundreds or thousands when we make royal f*** ups, not just one at a time.
That's merely because retention rates fall over time if the information is not used. That doesn't change the need to learn the material in the first place. A doctor that learned the needed core material, but does not quite remember any longer can quickly regain the knowledge in a pinch, but a doctor that never learned it is a walking, talking liability.Tropicaz said:
The same goes for my own field, engineering, to an even greater degree. We kill people by the hundreds or thousands when we make royal f*** ups, not just one at a time.
Yup.370999 said:
In the US a 70% is a "C-" or a "Pass", which would make it equivalent to a 50% in most other places. A 50% in the United States is a solid "F" or "Fail".
Some Universities in the US have turned to a Pass/Fail ONLY system, where you don't get a letter grade. This is mostly done in the most competitive schools to reduce student stress.
An odd quirk of the US system is that the calculations for GPA actually act a lot like the rest of the world. The top GPA you can attain is a 4.0 (barring special situations), and the lowest a 1.0. Most universities require a 2.5 for admittance, and professional schools often require a 3.0 (so that would make it a 75% for the UK and Australia).
In the end there isn't much of a difference. Most professors curve the course to a 70-75% for the average of a class, so it doesn't really matter. If "Pass" was only 50% then they'd just curve the course to 50%. In the US, at least, most of the "on the ball" students aim to be a standard deviation or two ahead of the average for that reason.
He also said that they lost points for leaving questions blank. So you're forced to guess...Heronblade said:
I've never heard of a negative marking system that deducts for leaving blank and leaving wrong.
At the end of the day though, most people have some things on their transcript that they could have done better at. One fail, especially if it's not in your major, doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Just learn from it for your further years.
At the end of the day though, most people have some things on their transcript that they could have done better at. One fail, especially if it's not in your major, doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Just learn from it for your further years.
Yeah, I hated this form of testing. I know that it was in order to prevent people from guessing, but there are always questions that have two answers that are close to being correct. So it always leaves people to ignore all the questions that they can't answer blank and move on. I think that's a horrible way to inspire learning; get a question wrong and you get penalized. I'd much rather have questions that you can work out and/or explain your reasoning because if you are slightly wrong, you can at least demonstrate what you do know and get some credit rather than taking a multiple choice and giving the impression of "Well, I'm not sure so I'm just going to Russian Roulette this and hope for the best," or "I'm too chicken to take a chance, so I'm just going to remove my traces from this completely," both that do not yield desirable results in learning.asmidir said:
My university course had 40% as their passing grade, 50+ was a 2:2, 60+ a 2:1 and 70+ a 1st.Kopikatsu said:
It sounds like a doss but they even it out by marking ridiculously hard, for example it came out in our third year that all our lecturers were marking tests out of 80%, meaning an absolutely perfect essay would only get you 80%. Our marks weren't graded on a curve either, so there were a few times everyone would do completely awful if the lecturer was crap or in a bad mood.
Why thank you for asking. Here, have a slice of apple pie and a patriotic sparkler while I explain how it works over here.370999 said:
Put bluntly the requirements are different depending on what university you attend, what state its in, what department your degree is in, the standards of the professor, and the flight speed of an unladen African swallow. Every professor grades their tests differently, though I have yet to come across any that don't mark a blank answer wrong. At the end of the semester so long as your average for the class is at least D by the standards of that particular university (usually on a 10 point scale so a %60 at the absolute minimum) you will receive the full credit hours for the course. Some degrees, however, require that you pass certain classes with a C or higher to advance in the curriculum; though again this varies based on the university. In those cases it's a %70 minimum to "pass"; by university standards you do pass with a %60 but by department standards you didn't. Even still the C or better requirement will most likely be restricted to only classes taken within that department for that particular degree.
Then there's the professors. I have seen some professors bend over backwards to bring up the class average. My suspicion is that its because they'll be fired if they fail too many students; I've heard rumors of certain legendarily hard professors at my university being canned for that reason specifically.
Private universities I think have higher standards, but they also have absurdly high tuitions which most of us couldn't even begin to afford even with loans. Though the public universities aren't much better in terms of price and typically charge far, far more money for students from out of state to attend. (The current in state tuition I currently pay I think is is $5.2k a semester and out of state tuition is $16.7k)
Put simply, the higher education system in the US is fucked, like royally fucked.
