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by pdonis27 days ago |
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upvoteby BalinKing27 days ago|
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The advantage(?) of take-home exams à la Caltech is that they can be open everything and 3–5 hours long :-P (For what it's worth, being able to listen to music during an exam, ctrl+F a digital textbook, etc. was super awesome; it would deeply sadden me if that becomes infeasible in the future once enough students stop caring about the Honor Code....)
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upvoteby pdonis27 days ago|
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I had in-class exams at MIT that were up to 3 hours long. Take home would definitely have been nicer.
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upvoteby throwaway203726 days ago|
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Could students use the bathroom during the exam? If not, sheesh it could hard to hold it when very nervous during a long exam!
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upvoteby hawaiianbrah26 days ago|
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I only recall some finals at MIT being that long. Which classes had normal exams that long?
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upvoteby pdonis26 days ago|
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They were finals, not ordinary tests or midterms. Junior and senior year, I think one was Chemical Engineering, but I can't remember the exact name or number.
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upvoteby throw4829626 days ago|
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This year 6.7800 has a both 3h midterm and a 3h final, for instance. Wish us luck.
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upvoteby pdonis26 days ago|
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That would be this?

https://web.mit.edu/6.7800/www/info24.pdf

Or at least this year's version? If so, it looks like Course 6 hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Good luck!

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upvoteby userbinator26 days ago|
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"Cheating" was pointless, because everyone else in the room was struggling just as hard as you were.

That reminds me of what an instructor (one of the best ones I've had) said a long time ago in response to one of my classmates asking if the exam could be open-book: "I could make it so, but it's not going to get any easier." The same instructor also responded to another question with "it doesn't mean I won't change the length of the exam."

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upvoteby throwaway203726 days ago|
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This is genius. I wish my own university exams were similar. I wasted so much mental effort trying to memorise stuff for an exam. In the real world, what you really need is a "good mental index" to know where to look it up. Sure, you can go to an extreme (in the wrong direction -- a "know-nothing"), but I felt memorising endless organic chemistry reactions for an exam was pointless for the real world.
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upvoteby wallst0726 days ago|
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Same, but before AI.

The thought being that the Engineering exams were so difficult that even with the text book, you had little chance of getting it right unless you knew the material.

Often, final exams were just one question, but you were graded on the multiple pages of work you had to show.

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upvoteby pdonis26 days ago|
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> Same, but before AI.

My time at MIT was well before AI. And before smartphones. Even PCs were new then--I didn't have one until my senior year, and that PC had less computing power than is in things like microwaves nowadays.

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