4 ms·

Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard that set

Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.

RK 14y ago
I think it's pretty common at "elite" schools in the US to have unsupervised, take home tests. Where I went to college we often had closed book, timed take home tests and I think compliance was actually extremely high.
- rikacomet 14y ago
  aren't they elite, because the difficulty is elite as well?
beloch 14y ago
Take home exams can actually be quite brutal, but are rarely encountered in large (i.e. 100+ student) classes because they usually result in an correspondingly brutal amount of marking. I've had them only in a few senior undergrad courses and grad school. Why are they brutal when you have your notes, books, the web, etc. available? They're usually not based on spitting back answers you were given or can look up. You actually need to use what you've learned to produce something novel or, at least, very esoteric. e.g. I've had exams where I was asked to look up a paper and reproduce the unpublished proof to get from equation (x) to equation (y). Such proofs are often not published because the authors are freaking geniuses who view the derivation as obvious, and getting to the point where you can do the same proof with intense effort is one point of the course! These exams are often fiendishly difficult and/or open-ended, so you will be working like a crazy fool from the moment you get the exam until it must be turned in. This sometimes means pulling an all-nighter (or more). (I despise all-nighters as the last resort of poor planners, and hate being forced into them.) Time is such a constraint that, if you didn't study and absorb all the course material thoroughly prior to the exam, you will likely not be able to get much done in the time allowed. Frequently nobody in the class will actually finish, and it's really just a matter of how much you can do relative to your peers, and how well. Collaboration during preparation was never forbidden in my field, although I hear other disciplines (especially humanities) can be quite different. Collaboration during the test is usually discouraged, but obviously students are on the honor system. If any actual copying is detectable from what is handed in you can bet it was egregiously bad. If Harvard was able to make charges stick to 70 students, you can safely bet that twice that number cheated their hineys off, but many were just a bit smarter about it.
- blablabla123 14y ago
  Not so much difference to exercises in difficult courses I encountered. But we called that homework. (Germany)
  - slurry 14y ago
    Which is why German universities are consistently at the top of international rankings, right? Oh, wait...
    - coldarchon 14y ago
      Do you really come here just to flame people? That comment was so useless like you being here ..
    - blablabla123 14y ago
      I thought the international top 20 equal the U.S. top 20. Seriously, think about it, it just cannot make sense. Nobel price winners come from all countries. A university does not need to belong to the U.S. Ivy League to have smart alumni. However... The Ivy League is really expensive and well-known. In fact people like George W. Bush studied there. It is almost like a self-amplifying loop.
- matwood 14y ago
  Bingo. I had an Automata class where the final was a 5 question take home exam. It took me about 15-20 hours to complete all 5 proofs, and I still only received a 98. I jumped over what I thought was an obvious step in one of the proofs :/ The only stipulations for the exam was no collaboration and show all work.
- sigkill 14y ago
  This is true. When the professor asks, if you want a take-home or an open book it's usually a trick question, and you always supposed to ask for a closed book test. Grad school, doubly so.
  - 14y ago
intended 14y ago
A take home exam can be as taxing as any other test you can take and often is more difficult than your generic test. In some ways more so, at least on campus you have access to resources and other students. If students, act according to an honor code, then professors can get on with the work of teaching. If people have to spend all their time fighting cheating, which is a non trivial task, it creates a very different environment. I would go so far as saying that it ends up obviating the entire point and purpose of college. ---- This is what colleges were originally built around: Students came because they wanted to learn X subject, and the best place to do that was with the professors who were essentially THE experts in their field. You want libraries and data sources bar none? Universities had them. Want to deal with and learn from like minded students and teachers? Few other places you could be to get that. People assumed that you wouldn't cheat on your test because that would be like cheating on a MIT open courseware test. Now things are different - for a lot of people, colleges have become "The next step" to get a job. People assume that the correlation now goes the other way - college MAKES you better at getting jobs. As a result your population is also now filled with a lot more students who just don't care. The degree is your only way to get a foot into the door of a stupid system. To steal a phrase from finance, college must be decoupled from "financial success." Note: A better insight is avaialble from Panos Ipeirotis' experience dealing with cheating in his class a year or so ago. IT was discussed extensively on HN and the blog post, now pulled, was called "why I will never pursue Cheating again". If you dig around a bit though you should be able to find a copy.
- fnbr 14y ago
  Panos' piece can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2774254 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2774254
slurry 14y ago
Take home finals are not the norm at Harvard. Most final exams are proctored by old ladies from Cambridge who are very strict about everything. Where take home exams are used, a) they're usually harder than proctored exams, and b) they're usually open-book, so you're not expected to "write it just off the top of [your] head". The rule is you have to work alone, can't work with another student. That's the rule that these students broke, apparently.
protomyth 14y ago
I had a take home exam in Combinatorics that was 9 questions. I had 20 days to turn it in and worked on it each day for about 8 hours. I finished 5 questions with a mountain of paper turned in. I was pretty depressed thinking I had blown it. Turns out someone answered 7 (Math PhD), 6 (Physics PhD), 5 (two of us) and the rest 4 or under (6 or 8 students I think). I never ever wanted a take home final like that again.

RK 14y ago

I think it's pretty common at "elite" schools in the US to have unsupervised, take home tests. Where I went to college we often had closed book, timed take home tests and I think compliance was actually extremely high.

rikacomet 14y ago
aren't they elite, because the difficulty is elite as well?

beloch 14y ago

Take home exams can actually be quite brutal, but are rarely encountered in large (i.e. 100+ student) classes because they usually result in an correspondingly brutal amount of marking. I've had them only in a few senior undergrad courses and grad school. Why are they brutal when you have your notes, books, the web, etc. available? They're usually not based on spitting back answers you were given or can look up. You actually need to use what you've learned to produce something novel or, at least, very esoteric. e.g. I've had exams where I was asked to look up a paper and reproduce the unpublished proof to get from equation (x) to equation (y). Such proofs are often not published because the authors are freaking geniuses who view the derivation as obvious, and getting to the point where you can do the same proof with intense effort is one point of the course! These exams are often fiendishly difficult and/or open-ended, so you will be working like a crazy fool from the moment you get the exam until it must be turned in. This sometimes means pulling an all-nighter (or more). (I despise all-nighters as the last resort of poor planners, and hate being forced into them.) Time is such a constraint that, if you didn't study and absorb all the course material thoroughly prior to the exam, you will likely not be able to get much done in the time allowed. Frequently nobody in the class will actually finish, and it's really just a matter of how much you can do relative to your peers, and how well. Collaboration during preparation was never forbidden in my field, although I hear other disciplines (especially humanities) can be quite different. Collaboration during the test is usually discouraged, but obviously students are on the honor system. If any actual copying is detectable from what is handed in you can bet it was egregiously bad. If Harvard was able to make charges stick to 70 students, you can safely bet that twice that number cheated their hineys off, but many were just a bit smarter about it.

blablabla123 14y ago
Not so much difference to exercises in difficult courses I encountered. But we called that homework. (Germany)
- slurry 14y ago
  Which is why German universities are consistently at the top of international rankings, right? Oh, wait...
  - coldarchon 14y ago
    Do you really come here just to flame people? That comment was so useless like you being here ..
  - blablabla123 14y ago
    I thought the international top 20 equal the U.S. top 20. Seriously, think about it, it just cannot make sense. Nobel price winners come from all countries. A university does not need to belong to the U.S. Ivy League to have smart alumni. However... The Ivy League is really expensive and well-known. In fact people like George W. Bush studied there. It is almost like a self-amplifying loop.
matwood 14y ago
Bingo. I had an Automata class where the final was a 5 question take home exam. It took me about 15-20 hours to complete all 5 proofs, and I still only received a 98. I jumped over what I thought was an obvious step in one of the proofs :/ The only stipulations for the exam was no collaboration and show all work.
sigkill 14y ago
This is true. When the professor asks, if you want a take-home or an open book it's usually a trick question, and you always supposed to ask for a closed book test. Grad school, doubly so.
- 14y ago

intended 14y ago

A take home exam can be as taxing as any other test you can take and often is more difficult than your generic test. In some ways more so, at least on campus you have access to resources and other students. If students, act according to an honor code, then professors can get on with the work of teaching. If people have to spend all their time fighting cheating, which is a non trivial task, it creates a very different environment. I would go so far as saying that it ends up obviating the entire point and purpose of college. ---- This is what colleges were originally built around: Students came because they wanted to learn X subject, and the best place to do that was with the professors who were essentially THE experts in their field. You want libraries and data sources bar none? Universities had them. Want to deal with and learn from like minded students and teachers? Few other places you could be to get that. People assumed that you wouldn't cheat on your test because that would be like cheating on a MIT open courseware test. Now things are different - for a lot of people, colleges have become "The next step" to get a job. People assume that the correlation now goes the other way - college MAKES you better at getting jobs. As a result your population is also now filled with a lot more students who just don't care. The degree is your only way to get a foot into the door of a stupid system. To steal a phrase from finance, college must be decoupled from "financial success." Note: A better insight is avaialble from Panos Ipeirotis' experience dealing with cheating in his class a year or so ago. IT was discussed extensively on HN and the blog post, now pulled, was called "why I will never pursue Cheating again". If you dig around a bit though you should be able to find a copy.

fnbr 14y ago
Panos' piece can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2774254 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2774254

slurry 14y ago

Take home finals are not the norm at Harvard. Most final exams are proctored by old ladies from Cambridge who are very strict about everything. Where take home exams are used, a) they're usually harder than proctored exams, and b) they're usually open-book, so you're not expected to "write it just off the top of [your] head". The rule is you have to work alone, can't work with another student. That's the rule that these students broke, apparently.

protomyth 14y ago

I had a take home exam in Combinatorics that was 9 questions. I had 20 days to turn it in and worked on it each day for about 8 hours. I finished 5 questions with a mountain of paper turned in. I was pretty depressed thinking I had blown it. Turns out someone answered 7 (Math PhD), 6 (Physics PhD), 5 (two of us) and the rest 4 or under (6 or 8 students I think). I never ever wanted a take home final like that again.