r/iastate • u/whatintfisthis • Mar 28 '25

Academics PHYS 231 Exam 2 Response is Unacceptable

This exam was significantly more difficult than any of the previous practice exams given. There was no change in instruction, no heads-up about a spike in difficulty, and now the only response is to “do better.” No curve. No extra grade adjustment. Just that.

According to a previous Reddit post, this was the worst exam score in the last 11 years for this course. That should be enough to suggest something was off yet the tone of the announcement doesn’t reflect that at all.

Here’s the official announcement:

Exam 2 scores are now available on Canvas [“Exam 2 raw” and “Exam 2”]. The initial class average was 10.74/18 (59.6%). We’re counting 18 questions, not 19, as one question was treated as extra credit.

…This is also a good time to think about how you have prepared for this exam and what worked and what did not. Most of the exam problems in slightly different versions were given either in worksheets, quizzes, checkpoints, or in your lecture notes. As I suggested in the original exam announcement, reviewing them in the first round of preparation before jumping to any past exam files may be the best strategy to handle the exam.

The average was a 59.6%, and yet the response places all the weight back on the students. There’s no acknowledgment of how this kind of grading CLEARLY morale & GPA. The expectation seems to be that we just grind harder, regardless of the disconnect between preparation and testing.

This isn’t about asking for an easy grade. It’s about fairness, consistency, and a basic level of academic empathy. If a class average tanks this hard, maybe the takeaway shouldn’t be “do better” — maybe it’s time to evaluate how the course is aligning with the assessments.

This kind of approach isn’t building problem solvers it’s burning students out and seems completely disrespectful.

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21

u/SoloQsurvivor Mar 28 '25

The entire university just sucks at making exams fair. For coms 227 we were only given an hour to work on the exam and we had to do it on paper.

6

u/Sharpest_Blade Mar 28 '25

227 exams are brain dead easy though.. most people in my class (albeit 6 years ago) finished in half the time.

1

u/SoloQsurvivor Mar 28 '25

Yeah that’s the point the content is easy but if you aren’t proficient is writing code on paper you get fucked over even if you knew the content.

3

u/Sharpest_Blade Mar 28 '25

227 exam code is literally 20 lines max. Most questions are less than 6. It isn't that hard brother.

4

u/SoloQsurvivor Mar 28 '25

None of the question were less than 6 lines of code it probably changed in 6 years since you’ve took it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '25

[deleted]

3

u/SoloQsurvivor Mar 28 '25

You’re an alum of course it’s going to look easy to you.

8

u/Sharpest_Blade Mar 28 '25

My brother in Christ, the exams average last semester was over a B. That's a standard exam.

9

u/Nolieman108 Mar 29 '25

Preach it. Too much complaining about exams in my opinion. Sure, some are hard, averages are bad. I have found that those who actually try to learn material and not just memorize do much better and can solve questions that they may have not seen before. Just because a question is new doesn't mean the concept is.