Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Econ Final

Okay, I'm very delinquent in my overall post summarizing the Managerial Economics course - working on it, I swear - but I just had to break in on the final.

WOW, what a final! The course was, overall, a very valuable one - I really enjoyed it. It was also one that took a lot of work. The final, however... MAN, did they stick it to us! Okay, it may not have been the worst final I've ever taken, but it was definitely harder than I anticipated, and I think I go along with the rest of the class in that regard.

It was two parts - multiple choice and short answer/free response.

I just thought I'd pull out some "summary statistics", based on the class averages for the final - bear in mind, that if your GPA falls below a 3.0 (B average), you're on academic probation (I believe this is typical of most master's programs). This course's letter grade cut-offs were A=90, B=81, C=70.
  • Final was worth 53% of the total grade(!)
  • Average score on the Short Answer was 71.25%
  • Average total score was 76.85%


Final Pts Course Wt.
Final PctAvg PtsAvg PctAvg Pct - Wt.
MC3023.85%45% 25.11 83.70% 37.67%
SA/FR40 29.15% 55% 28.5 71.25% 39.19%
Total 70 53.00% 100% 53.61
76.85%

So anyway - the masochistic side of me really appreciates the fact that they stuck it to us - I appreciate the rigor. But then the other side of me just hurts! ;-) That means the average score on the final - comprising over half of the grade of the course - was a C. And not even a very high C, at that.

The overall course grade distribution was 46% A/A-, 36% B+/B, and 18% B-/C.

Anyway - hopefully this demonstrates that we are being held to a reasonably strict standard, I think. Not quite 50% A/A-'s may seem pretty lax at first glance, but where you're essentially limited to A's and B's to be in good academic standing... that nearly 20% of B-/C really jumps out. I mean, it's clearly not statistically significant evidence - we could just all be dumb, on average - but you'll have to take my word for the fact that those in my cohort are, by and large, very sharp people. ;-)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That sounds scary....any chance you can provide some example of questions you were asked in the test? I wonder how difficult it was...