Multiple-choice

It surprised me quite a bit to find out how different the Profs are from each other, and how the requirements they put on the students varies from one to the other. In some courses, everything seems to be done by multiple-choice tests. There's a skill to doing these, and it varies from subject to subject. Often, for example, you'll have a mathematical problem to do that takes maybe five minutes. At the end, you see if any of the answers (a)-(e) on the test matches what you got when you did the problem. If it doesn't, you're in a lot of trouble. Of course, this raises your level of stress as you come near to the end of the problem. Unlike what I've ever seen before, there are no marks for getting it nearly all right. I don't like that, Maybe in the problem there are ten things you have to do, but if you get nine right and one wrong, you get zero. Like, 90%=0%. But that's the way it's set up, and I guess there's no other way when there are so many students.

In other courses, like Biology, you can often do the question by eliminating some of the wrong alternatives. Each question needs you to read four fairly long sentences or even paragraphs, one of which is the right alternative. It's not often you see any ridiculous ones that you'd know were wrong even if you hadn't done the work, but still there are skills in screening out the wrong alternatives. It's hard to describe because it's actually different from one question to the next. Sometimes you have to recognize the right answer; other times you have to go through them all and eliminate the wrong ones one at a time. Or maybe a combination of each. The only way is to have done a lot of them; you get better at it as time goes on.

Something else you have to watch out for is timing. Lots of the questions take a long time to figure out, either because there's a lot of reading, or because there's a mathematical problem that it takes time to solve. With either kind, under the stressed condition you're in, you can get absolutely confused and completely screwed-up. You've already invested several minutes on the question. So it's hard to do, but you absolutely have to: give up and move on. Now occasionally, inspiration strikes you later on and you can come back to it and see what to do. In my experience though, that mostly happens just after the test is over, especially when you're discussing it with others afterwards. And once, I suddenly woke up in the night, understanding exactly what to do. Yeah, it's all sick. But it's part of life here.

Actually, the way they construct the questions is very clever. Once you've mastered the method, you can see that only someone who understands the work quite thoroughly can do the question. If you haven't done it, or if you only half understand it, or only understand part of it, you won't be able to do the question. At best, you might see that two of the alternatives are wrong, but then have to guess from the other two. There are no marks off for wrong answers, so if you find yourself in that position, you're best of to guess. Your chances of hitting it right are better than if you didn't know anything. So over a lot of questions, it works out about right.