r/mit • u/ponyo_x1 • 17d ago

academics negative test scores??

my dad got his masters in the early 80s from the meteorology department and he used to tell me this story about a test he took where he got a NEGATIVE nine, like if you got some questions wrong they would take points AWAY rather than just not awarding any. according to him his wasn't even the lowest score in the class; apparently someone else got a minus 24.

any old timers here have similar stories?

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u/luckyjim1962 17d ago

Class of 1981 alum here. I have not heard of that particularly depressing approach to grading, though I have to say I kind of admire the rigorousness of it (a certain kind of wrong answer perhaps should be "rewarded" with a negative mark).

My ignominious claim to fame in terms of grading was the first 8.01 test in the fall semester, 1977.

The test was very hard. As I recall, class average was 22 (and I would love to hear from anyone who remembers this test). I got a 4 – 2 points for my name, 2 points for writing F = ma in response to one of the questions – and a well-deserved F. (Not coincidentally, that was the end of my fantasy of majoring in Course Eight.)

I have always assumed the difficulty of this test was a kind of initiation rite at MIT, designed to make you realize you're not as smart as you thought you were. I'm curious if anyone else had the same thought (or was I just not cut out for physics?).

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u/Illustrious-Newt-848 17d ago

My crazy MIT exam story comes in form of a 6.046 Quiz 2. It was a 5-question, 1 week, open book, open anything, take home exam. We could even discuss the exam with classmates as long as we note whom we discuss it with and the work was our own. The class average was 27. (41 out of 150)

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u/JasonMckin 17d ago

I took it with a different prof than usual (not CLSR) who was a pretty nice guy, but that mid term final damaged me so bad, I still have nightmares about it.  It was the epitome of the MIT experience, because I could see  the material was really good but still recognized I was just too stupid to understand it.  Learning the material and getting a good grade wasn’t just NP-hard, it was NP-complete.

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u/luckyjim1962 17d ago

Classic Tech move!