Old exams...

[dblock05]

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Just curious, but how many of you have found your teachers use questions from old exams from previous years? Just wondering if it is popular throughout the country at other big universities as well..

 

[crazybob]

Just curious, but how many of you have found your teachers use questions from old exams from previous years? Just wondering if it is popular throughout the country at other big universities as well..

it happens, but really depends on the teacher. some teachers will give you questions you have never seen before for every single question on their exams.

were you going somewhere with this or just asking only that question?

 

[owlegrad]

Just curious, but how many of you have found your teachers use questions from old exams from previous years? Just wondering if it is popular throughout the country at other big universities as well..

Not often word for word, but it's pretty common for "similar" questions to appear year after year.

 

[dblock05]

it happens, but really depends on the teacher. some teachers will give you questions you have never seen before for every single question on their exams.

were you going somewhere with this or just asking only that question?

I just wanted to see if it was popular elsewhere as it has been at my school.

 

[cjflahave]

Just curious, but how many of you have found your teachers use questions from old exams from previous years? Just wondering if it is popular throughout the country at other big universities as well..

It just depends on the professor. My organic professor remade every test each year to avoid this from happening. My general chemistry 2 professor gave us a midterm, allowed us to retake it, and it was the exact same test.

 

[a1park]

at my school it happens quite a bit, but again, it really depends on each professor and how...lazy? they are.

all of our chemistry professors' past class websites are archived, and many times, so are their exam answer keys. sometimes they delete them after the quarter is over.

many of my o-chem teachers copied their exam questions word-for-word, even multiple choice questions, from their past exams. it would suck for the students who never knew about these online archives because they would pretty much fall below the curve. i must say, it was pretty lame in terms of learning "concepts" because it ended up being all of us studying only their past exams, knowing at least 75% of it was probably going to show up on the midterms. towards the end of the o-chem series the curve just got so ridiculously high that if you made one mistake you were screwed because everyone else caught wind.

 

[Notecard]

Most of my professors actually gave us the last two or three years of previous tests. A lot of it wasn't the same lol.

 

[crazybob]

many of my o-chem teachers copied their exam questions word-for-word, even multiple choice questions, from their past exams. it would suck for the students who never knew about these online archives because they would pretty much fall below the curve. i must say, it was pretty lame in terms of learning "concepts" because it ended up being all of us studying only their past exams, knowing at least 75% of it was probably going to show up on the midterms. towards the end of the o-chem series the curve just got so ridiculously high that if you made one mistake you were screwed because everyone else caught wind.

So did you find yourself studying the old stuff more than what was actually taught in class? I hate classes like that. You just don't feel like you learn much, and just memorize and forget.

 

[a1park]

So did you find yourself studying the old stuff more than what was actually taught in class? I hate classes like that. You just don't feel like you learn much, and just memorize and forget.

yeah basically ended up studying mostly past exams and if i had time, class notes. people ended up not showing up to class since all they needed were the past exams.

 

[crazybob]

yeah basically ended up studying mostly past exams and if i had time, class notes. people ended up not showing up to class since all they needed were the past exams.

So did they feel like they learned much from the actual class?

 

[a1park]

So did they feel like they learned much from the actual class?

i dont know about others, but for me i dont think i learned as much as i could have. it made restudying organic for the PCATs a biotch. but it all ended up well, so yay?

 

[crazybob]

i dont know about others, but for me i dont think i learned as much as i could have. it made restudying organic for the PCATs a biotch. but it all ended up well, so yay?

I'd rather learn something well and get a B in the class rather than memorize old stuff, make an A, and not be sure whether or not I learned something.

 

[EmuPro]

It's people who rely on old exams to get by that make undergrad degrees so worthless nowadays.......🙁

 

[armorking]

It's people who rely on old exams to get by that make undergrad degrees so worthless nowadays.......🙁

I really feel it's how old exams are used. If you want to straight memorize answers and all, you aren't going to get the most from your education. If it's used as a resource, it can help confirm you know the material. My professors were awesome in the fact that they would give us old exams but would change up their exams tremendously. It was never a copy and paste exam. I usually performed poorly on many of my professor's first exams (even with answer keys) but I always regained my composure later on. I learned how to master the material thereafter since I would have an idea of what the professor wanted us to know based on the previous exam. I agree that using old exams to "get by" can make a degree worthless since it will reflect in a person's GPA, but apt students using it as a tool to confirm what they already know are how old exams should be used IMO.

 

[pharm B]

I've had professors teach a course that I left feeling like I'd learned a lot. They not only taught well, but they tested well.

The professors who test over trivial garbage are the ones where "tribal knowledge" (old exams, etc) was the common study guide for exams.

 

[crazybob]

Do you guys ever feel that when people who study a lot do poorly and ones who memorize old exams ace the tests make it seem like the course is just that hard to the point where you have to memorize old exams if you want to have a chance at a good grade?

 

[pharm B]

Do you guys ever feel that when people who study a lot do poorly and ones who memorize old exams ace the tests make it seem like the course is just that hard to the point where you have to memorize old exams if you want to have a chance at a good grade?

I think a good professor would do his or her best to prevent this from happening. Change up the problems, give everyone the same level of preparation, avoid multiple choice questions on certain concepts where short answer shows better understanding, etc.

I have to admit this is one reason I loved attending a community college. I never had a class with more than 30 people, and in stuff like O-Chem, that's invaluable. With that much instructor attention, I guess we never really had to worry about previous exams to do well.

 

[1TB4RKSB4CK]

It just depends on the professor. My organic professor remade every test each year to avoid this from happening. My general chemistry 2 professor gave us a midterm, allowed us to retake it, and it was the exact same test.

Exactly the same for my Biology class. We get one retake which was the exact same one taken the previous time.

 

[ValeRx]

Some of our professors give us previous years exams. This is to help us see what sort of questions they will be asking and get a feel for what we need to know. Most times questions are very similar but they will change a word here or there so you need to know everything about the question, not just the old answers.