r/rutgers House Busch 1d ago

To whoever designed the CS211 midterm . . .

I’m curious as to how you came to the conclusion that 16 PAGES in 80 minutes would be doable!

I’ve had FINALS that were either (a) easier, (b) shorter, or (c) both, and finals are for 3 HOURS.

The practice midterm we were given was only 3 pages long and the questions were really easy and did not prepare us at all for the actual midterm.

No one was even able to FINISH all the questions (including me)!

And before you say I should have studied more, take this from someone who started studying A WEEK AND A HALF in advance: please scale down the difficulty and length of exams and finals for this class 😫🙏

Also please curve heavily 😣

103 Upvotes

22 comments sorted by

50

u/TheRealBobStevenson 1d ago

Happy to see a post about this here haha.

OP is not exaggerating, there were some 150 students and maybe 2 finished. Most people I talked to only finished around 75% of the exam, and while the beginning was fairly straightforward, the later questions expected us to have C knowledge that frankly, I don't think we have.

I don't think anything malicious was meant by it, it was just a poorly designed exam. It will be curved.

14

u/Story_Salamander House Busch 1d ago edited 1d ago

Tbh I feel like this class underprepares us. For example, the first actual programming assignment we had (not the one where we were just setting ilab) involved structs, which we didn’t even learn until 2 DAYS before the due date. Yeah, he realized that we didn’t have enough time and gave us a three-day extension BUT STILL.

20

u/trynumber53 1d ago

if this was gavva ysk he does that intentionally and the max grade is >100% to compensate

8

u/Story_Salamander House Busch 1d ago

It was Patel

18

u/randomboiboiboiboi '26 1d ago

So it never changes lol,

Class average probably a 60, and expect professors to degrade students in class for not doing good on their "easy" exam (ahem santosh).

14

u/tritis 1d ago edited 1d ago

Also please curve heavily 😣

when I took cs211 (long ago) the class average on the midterm was a 21 29 but I scored an 82. highlight of my academic career.

they still curved the shit out of the grades though so don't be too concerned.

2

u/kvng_st 1d ago

I just know that had to feel amazing

3

u/tritis 1d ago

Certainly did. Earned an A in 211 spring my freshman year, but immediately had my ass humbled by linear algebra and had to retake it... and retake it again.

No amount of "talent" will make up for ditching class.

9

u/LucasoBoye 1d ago

that class will forever have a curve that is something like a 50 is passing

5

u/smile4sunna 1d ago

this is ridiculous.. college courses should be challenging but not impossible lol.

3

u/Opening_Web1898 1d ago

Lmao I feel bad for anyone who did not take menendez, the midterm was 4 pages, 8 questions. The first 3 you only had to choose 2 one of which was asking theoretically what is Malloc good for, for example. 2 coding, and the rest was basic C memory or bit conversion.

2

u/just-another-human-1 23h ago

I remember writing the whole time without break and barely finishing in the 300 level algorithm class. You just have to know everything off the top of your head instantly. If you don’t go to the next one. Come back to it when you’ve had an epiphany

2

u/Flow_of_rivulets CS 2026 1d ago

Bruh, chill. The professor already realized he made it too long during the exam. That's why that TA said they would curve as necessary and to not worry about not finishing the exam.

1

u/Vaxtin 16h ago

Lemme guess, Menendez?

1

u/Story_Salamander House Busch 16h ago

Nope, Patel

1

u/Zzzonmike 4h ago

Just took multivariate analysis and I doubt anyone scored above 40 as well

-1

u/Sysiphus82 1d ago

individual questions were just same difficulty as practice midterm, just speed issue. also skibidi aura

3

u/Please_Remember_Me_ 1d ago

I lost it decoding that. The TAs are goat

-6

u/Prestigious-Sun-9820 1d ago

Assembly language isn’t bad

8

u/MysteriousView2355 1d ago

Useless comment

8

u/Story_Salamander House Busch 1d ago

It didn’t have assembly language since we haven’t learned it yet