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What's the lowest test/course average you've ever seen?

Cyc

Cyc

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 11, 2000
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Canada
I was thinking about this today now that midterms are done. Last summer, I took a Chemistry summer course where the average grade at the end was 59%. A passing grade to continue in the faculty is 60%. That means that roughly half the people who took the course failed. Of that half, most were repeating the course from the regular school year. That means they failed twice.

This got me thinking. If you have all these bright, young minds working their tails off to get good grades, then wouldn't a low test score reflect bad on the school? Isn't the test-maker the common denominator in this equation? Obviously if these kids got into University, they're not a bunch of stupid slackers. (The admission requirements are quite high for the school in question, despite me being there ;)) Statistically, wouldn't such a large sample performing poorly simply prove that the test was too difficult?

I find it patently ridiculous that professors berate lecture chambers of 500+ people for not being able to reproduce something taught. The 900lb fucking elephant in the room is that it wasn't taught well enough. This seems especially obvious in a class full of science majors. I mean you could pretty much publish the damn results.

Anyways, what's the lowest average you've seen, and how did your professor or school handle the situation?
 
To answer my own question, I've had professors in the past strike some questions off a test if less than x% people got it right, or make a question into a bonus question. This seems to vary widely by course, however.

Like my above example, there are other classes where I swear they couldn't care less how many people got the question wrong.
 
At my undergrad school, this answer was actually pretty well-established. It was PHIL106: Symbolic Logic. I believe it had around a 60% pass rate (meaning 40% either dropped it or failed). I never took the course, so I cannot really assess how hard it was. But I know the professor had a reputation for pushing people at an insane pace, playing favorites, not caring if "stupid people failed," and so on. And it was taught at like a 3rd or 4th year level, when it was actually listed as a first-year course with no prereqs. Why so many people kept attempting it if its reputation was so well-known I don't exactly know, but the fact that my college had sooo many philosophy majors/minors might have had something to do with it.

Hardest I've ever actually been in was a second-year physics lab course, where the professor changed the percentiles to 80-100 for an A, 60-80 for a B, and so on. The average was like a 45 or something...it was insane.

Both of these professors seemed to be hard-asses who didn't care. How did the schools handle it? They basically let it go, as both were also tenured and had VERY strong research.
 
Symbolic logic was an awesome class ƒor observing peoples' scores.

Out of a class of 30 there were about 10 people who could get A's on everything no sweat, 5 who would get B's and C's depending on the material, and 15 who just could not figure out the simplest truth table for their very life, even at the end of the semester after being tutored.
 
A recent midterm for a Statics engineering class i take had a average of 52%, This was the first and easiest midterm, and it will be interesting to see the next exam. Apparently less then 10 people passed the course last year, out of 40-50.
 
Wow, the teacher of that class must feel like a total failure.
 
Do you feel its possible to have an entire class full of absolute jerk-offs?

I think I experienced that during my junior year in college. I went from the middle of my classes to near the top when new freshmen and sophomores started taking some of the same classes. Those guys would never ever participate in class and they all copied each other's homework.
 
Computers as Components: 50% pass rate (meaning half the kids failed the class EVERY year), average score about 55/100.

I busted my ass for a C in that class. The VERY next year, they changed the curriculum from the 8086 (original Pentium) processor to a simple Motorola processor!?!!!?!

I was not happy. Needless to say, I majored in mathematics, and minored in CS.
 
In HS, I knew someone with a 15 average--in informal geometry. For those of you who don't know what "informal geometry" is, it's basically "This is an equilateral triangle. This is the Third Postulate..." Let me add that this was not because the guy was dense--not at all.

Example from college: Introductory Latin. I think maybe 2 out of 20 students completed the workbook; for the rest, the teacher got so exasperated that he just curved based on how many chapters you'd finished.

With due respect to the OP, I disagree: poor test grades should reflect on the student, all things being equal. I talked to too many profs in college about how one the biggest problems with students these days (especially freshmen) was their self-righteous indignation at not being passed even when they were patently wrong. Real life example, related by a prof friend:

"Why did you mark me off for this one?"

"Because you said Rome was in Africa; it's in Italy."

"Close enough."

Though I can't speak for Canada (or even other states), I do know that here there's a kind of cattle-car mentality at getting kids out of school and into college and out into the workforce with little emphasis on skill or talent--notwithstanding that there are indeed people who are so gifted. I know this makes me sound terribly meritocratic, but anyone who's looked at the grammar, spelling, and etiquette of college underclass writing today would understand, IMO.
 
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The thing is, is that there's very little actual math; it's largely conceptual. I took it out of fear of "real" geometry, though it turned out to be a waste of a year; I was no better prepared when "real" geometry came around. But, I did well in trig in college. Go figure...
 
Belisarius said:
With due respect to the OP, I disagree: poor test grades should reflect on the student, all things being equal. I talked to too many profs in college about how one the biggest problems with students these days (especially freshmen) was their self-righteous indignation at not being passed even when they were patently wrong. Real life example, related by a prof friend:

.
Click to expand...

Test grades should definitely reflect on teacher as well though. No, students shouldn't get credit for something they actually got wrong. But a teacher should be able to properly prepare students for their tests.
I have a teacher right now that will teach one way, have us read out of a certain book. But THEN come test time, it'll be required that we use concepts that were in neither the book or lecture...the teacher just plain isn't very capable of teaching us what we need to know to pass his course.
 
Well Bel, with such a large sample data (hundreds of students) then the clear common denominator is the course or the person teaching it.

If people are failing by design, then I think students have a right to find out what the University's motives are.

I have no problem with meritocracy, I just think people should be roughly rewarded for the amount of time and effort invested into learning a subject. If test scores don't reflect that, then we need to start asking questions.
 
I'm all for natural selection, and I lean towards thinking of the teacher as a figurehead and believing you should probably learn from the book...

But people are saying the teachers are asking about things that aren't on the lectures, or covered in the book- and not as extra credit, but enough to fail entire classes. Doesn't that sound bizarre to you? Makes me wonder what the hell is going on.
 
An Iz said:
But people are saying the teachers are asking about things that aren't on the lectures, or covered in the book- and not as extra credit, but enough to fail entire classes. Doesn't that sound bizarre to you? Makes me wonder what the hell is going on.
Click to expand...

I've seen similar 8o pulled. I took an art history course (ya, I missed an art history minor by 1 course, believe it or not...) once, and there was required reading and optional reading. Of course, I only did the required reading. And then the final exam covered BOTH sets of readings. I ended up with a B in the course, and the professor claimed that the optional reading was a "test" to see who truly deserved an A. Screw that!
 
I've seen some curves that brought people up to C's from F's and some serious inflation to ensure someone passed a course.

The course I am taking right now just had its midterm a short time ago. All but 1 out of 5 students (all of us are beyond traditional college age) passed in the 80s or above. He curved it a bit, but just a bit.

The one who flunked - and I do mean flunked - got a 33% which he got for basically making some of the right marks on the form. I felt badly for him, but what could we do?

There are now just four of us, all motivated and helping each other, with a good instructor. I'd be surprised if any of us bombed the final - though there will be no curve (course requirement).

I saw a paper in an abnormal psych upper-level undergrad class where we had to choose a psych disorder and write 3000 words on it. The person picked ADHD and got a 25%.
 
An Iz said:
Do you feel its possible to have an entire class full of absolute jerk-offs?
Click to expand...

I do, but not when the course consists of 1600 students.

We just got the 'short answer' portion of our Chemistry midterms back. The average mark was 47%.

Keep in mind, a pass is 60%.
 
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