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Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013)

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674 points peterkshultz | 1 comments | 19 Oct 25 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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joshvm ◴[19 Oct 25 17:50 UTC] No.45636243[source]▶
One really important factor is the grading curve, if used. At my university, I think the goal was to give the average student 60%, or a mid 2.1) with some formula for test score adjustment to compensate for particularly tough papers. The idea is that your score ends up representing your ability with respect to the cohort and the specific tests that you were given.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/general/...

There were several courses that were considered easy, and as a consequence were well attended. You had to do significantly better in those classes to get a high grade, versus a low-attendance hard course where 50% in the test was curved up to 75%.

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britzkopf ◴[19 Oct 25 18:04 UTC] No.45636394[source]▶
So another strategy to do well might include tempting your classmates to distraction or perhaps offering to "help" them but in fact feed them misinformation? Got it.
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1. xmprt ◴[19 Oct 25 18:39 UTC] No.45636729[source]▶
You are typically the average of the people you keep around you. If you feel like you're going to get ahead by tricking your friends/peers then it likely means that you're not going to gain much when compared to the rest of the class (unless you're somehow able to deceive an entire class of 100+ students). On the flip side, if you and all your friends are supportive of each other then you're more likely to succeed when compared to the rest of the class. This does have the opposite effect of making it harder for students that don't have the same support/study groups but it goes completely against the point you're trying to make.