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Yes exams are heavily weighted, but labs/assignments are not usually easy in stem courses. You're delusional if you think that you're gonna get a 4.0 by half-as

Yes exams are heavily weighted, but labs/assignments are not usually easy in stem courses. You're delusional if you think that you're gonna get a 4.0 by half-assing course work, and even more delusional if you think someone like that will average over 90% on their exams. The SAT covers fairly basic topics that nearly every student should know, that's why it's like an IQ test. When I was in school freshmen would take it just to see what it was like, and many would score well on their first try.

asdff 3y ago
The labs at least are not designed to be challenging. They are designed to safely demonstrate some topic. I have been graded on yield and purity in chemistry before but it was only on a sliver of a percentage of the write up grade. Things can go sideways on you in lab all the time the last thing they want is for you to be worrying about that and dropping glassware full of chemistry. Lecture component was always the ugly beast that demanded all your focus. The lab, you show up, you do your writeup, you get a great grade on that section generally. If they have a lab specific exam at the end of the semester its a mole hill compared to the mountain of the chemistry lecture exam.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  Well we definitely didn't have the same experience. Labs and course work often made up between 25%-50% of the grade. This has been the case in both undergrad and grad school at a top school. If you did sloppy work and got Bs all semester you weren't magically going to turn that into an A with some good exams, even if it was theoretically possible. The points definitely weren't free either.
ryukoposting 3y ago
Nothing you've said refutes my argument that exams are the most important component of a college GPA. Yes, homework can be hard, but it's rarely a plurality component of a final grade. Yes, labs can be a major component of a final grade, but they're rarely difficult enough to constitute anything more than a soft curve. > You're delusional if you think that you're gonna get a 4.0 by half-assing course work Nobody employing such a strategy was trying to get a 4.0 in the first place. In fact, setting the benchmark GPA for rigorous postsecondary education at 4.0 is itself delusional. > The SAT covers fairly basic topics that nearly every student should know, that's why it's like an IQ test Having taken two IQ tests administered by two different psychologists, I can confidently say no. The SAT does not resemble an actual IQ test. The SAT doesn't test short-term memory, and it only indirectly tests associative thinking. That said, there's probably a correlation with IQ test scores, because smart people are smart, and so they perform well at tasks designed to test intelligence... just like how being good at taking tests in high school, means you'll probably be pretty good at it in college too.

asdff 3y ago

The labs at least are not designed to be challenging. They are designed to safely demonstrate some topic. I have been graded on yield and purity in chemistry before but it was only on a sliver of a percentage of the write up grade. Things can go sideways on you in lab all the time the last thing they want is for you to be worrying about that and dropping glassware full of chemistry. Lecture component was always the ugly beast that demanded all your focus. The lab, you show up, you do your writeup, you get a great grade on that section generally. If they have a lab specific exam at the end of the semester its a mole hill compared to the mountain of the chemistry lecture exam.

zeroCalories 3y ago
Well we definitely didn't have the same experience. Labs and course work often made up between 25%-50% of the grade. This has been the case in both undergrad and grad school at a top school. If you did sloppy work and got Bs all semester you weren't magically going to turn that into an A with some good exams, even if it was theoretically possible. The points definitely weren't free either.

ryukoposting 3y ago

Nothing you've said refutes my argument that exams are the most important component of a college GPA. Yes, homework can be hard, but it's rarely a plurality component of a final grade. Yes, labs can be a major component of a final grade, but they're rarely difficult enough to constitute anything more than a soft curve. > You're delusional if you think that you're gonna get a 4.0 by half-assing course work Nobody employing such a strategy was trying to get a 4.0 in the first place. In fact, setting the benchmark GPA for rigorous postsecondary education at 4.0 is itself delusional. > The SAT covers fairly basic topics that nearly every student should know, that's why it's like an IQ test Having taken two IQ tests administered by two different psychologists, I can confidently say no. The SAT does not resemble an actual IQ test. The SAT doesn't test short-term memory, and it only indirectly tests associative thinking. That said, there's probably a correlation with IQ test scores, because smart people are smart, and so they perform well at tasks designed to test intelligence... just like how being good at taking tests in high school, means you'll probably be pretty good at it in college too.