Summer school 2009 (1 Viewer)

[BoganBoy]

I a bit confused regarding the difficulty of summer session compare to semester sessions. Many people say summer school is relatively 'easier' or 'easier to get a D' than normal session. but i fail to see why. Ive come up with the conclusion that it is actually HARDER to do well during summer session than normal session. My logic follows and if theres any flaw please enlighten me.

1. Assuming the actual difficulty of summer school is the same ( or very similar) as semester, in absolute term. By that i mean we do not get into the argument that some geniuses might find it piss easy.

2. There are essentially 2 types of people doing summer school.

a. Repeaters: These people have already done the unit once and is repeating because of a fail or PC or any other reason. They are greatly advantaged over first attempt students like me because they have already done it once.

b. Eagers Beavers: These guys do it because they want to get ahead in their degree, eager to learn new things, want to boost their GPA etc. THese guys should also get fairly good marks because they are.....eager beavers.

No matter why they do summer school, they all have forked out 3-4 thousand cold harh cash and has a great incentive to do well, therefore study very hard.

Therefore pretty much everyone in the class will pretty much get good marks in absolute term. And assuming the normal SNG process applies. What could have earned you a D in the semester (75 raw lets say), would probably only land you a Cr in summer because a lot more people will achieve 75 raw. Therefore its much harder to do well in summer school than semester session.

if anyone bothered to read through that please help me.

bb

 

[Mathmatics85]

There are always lazy bums like me who have enrolled in summer session and will leave it till the last minute. It's hard to hit the books during the break...

 

[peter2]

I fucking HATE this stupid SNG crap. Seriously, its like it doesnt even matter if your sitting on 90/100 raw, if 60% plus people get 92, you will only get a pass. That is seriously fucking bullshit. No other uni that I know about does this. Lets say that in one subject in any given year and/or semester only students with uai's of 99 + do the subject. That will then suck because all of them will be ranked and some will only get a pass when in any other semester they would get a distinction etc. HATE THE SNG!!!!

 

[Pwnage101]

I fucking HATE this stupid SNG crap. Seriously, its like it doesnt even matter if your sitting on 90/100 raw, if 60% plus people get 92, you will only get a pass. That is seriously fucking bullshit. No other uni that I know about does this. Lets say that in one subject in any given year and/or semester only students with uai's of 99 + do the subject. That will then suck because all of them will be ranked and some will only get a pass when in any other semester they would get a distinction etc. HATE THE SNG!!!!

could someone explain what exactly SNG is? do they give out marks based on how well the cohort does?

and is this for all courses at macquarie?

 

[BoganBoy]

quite frankly i dont think many people completely understand the SNG process, neither do i.

The lecturers will always tell you that 'you are only competing against yourself, and 'theres no quota on how many HD/D given out'. HOwever you soon realise thats complete bullocks.

as far as i know there IS a set quota on grade distribution on the assumption that a particular year should not deviate too much from the historial average. So if there are 60% of people sitting on 90% average they assume that it must be because the paper was way too easy, and not because that the whole class is smarter.

for one of my unit i was actually scaled DOWN even though the unit is hardish. so now im totally confused.

bb

 

[weiwern28]

Well its not true that no other uni does an SNG like system for grading. You can read more about it here Bell curve grading - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I also remeber getting curved for my grades back in high school. Heres also an interesting article about grade inflation and deflation http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-03-27-princeton-grades_N.htm

 

[Boxxxhead]

There are essentially 2 types of people doing summer school.

a. Repeaters: These people have already done the unit once and is repeating because of a fail or PC or any other reason. They are greatly advantaged over first attempt students like me because they have already done it once.

b. Eagers Beavers: These guys do it because they want to get ahead in their degree, eager to learn new things, want to boost their GPA etc. THese guys should also get fairly good marks because they are.....eager beavers.

What about people who had to repeat another sub (eg people who had to redo STAT171) and to speed up their degree, did ECON201 in summer school before everybody else? Or maybe they didn't wanna do 4 subs a semester coz the work is too hard, so they save one for summer school?

Also.. the people who repeat courses might have an advantage, but they're often not bright/enthusiastic enough about their studies in order to obtain the marks you're able to. I know people who have failed the same subject more than once.

for one of my unit i was actually scaled DOWN even though the unit is hardish. so now im totally confused.

Hmm... what unit? Did you get your script viewed? Maybe the exam structure was unbalanced, e.g. it had too many items of a particular difficulty, or a single question may have had too much weighting, so there may have been a large gap in raw marks even though the students' understanding was not necessarily that segregated. I'm interested, since I didn't think either 255 or 271 (which is what I assume you're talking about) were scaled down.

I fucking HATE this stupid SNG crap. Seriously, its like it doesnt even matter if your sitting on 90/100 raw, if 60% plus people get 92, you will only get a pass. That is seriously fucking bullshit. No other uni that I know about does this. Lets say that in one subject in any given year and/or semester only students with uai's of 99 + do the subject. That will then suck because all of them will be ranked and some will only get a pass when in any other semester they would get a distinction etc. HATE THE SNG!!!!

I don't think it's a simple ranking that determines your grade though. I know that in 2007, the UAI for Actuarial decreased because they allowed more people into the course. That same year, there was a pretty big increase in students who failed to get the required Credit in STAT171. It was something like 9%, which I think goes past the "ranking" stage of things. I know they do use a SNG, but I'm pretty sure it's not as cut and dry as "this percentile get Pass, this percentile get Credit" and so forth. They'll take into account the quality of the work too.

Man, this was a big post lol.

 

[BoganBoy]

Hi Boxxhead yes i was talking about 255. I had 80 raw for my final, good marks for my assignments ( just like everyone else, haha), and not so good mark for my mid sem ( 65% exact). consider the final was 80% of the total, i calculated that my RAW for the sem was 79.XXX. however my final mark was only 75.

i had a friend with raw 81 for final and got 81 for final grade as well. only reason i can think of is that fact that he did marginally better than me in midsem (73%) and both assignments. pretty sure it has somehting to do with the SNG process.

PS. people who wants to lighten their semester load by doing summer school is categorized as 'eager beaver' by me, lol. and i suspect they are the ones who actually do the best out of all the summer schoolers.

bb

 

[Boxxxhead]

Hmm, that's rather weird. My friend got 82 on the final, and 84 overall which is what he'd get taking into account the assessments + mid semester.

 

[BoganBoy]

Just finished the first day of my summer class for econ201. doesnt seem so bad. went through some economic history and revisions of econ110. lecture room way too crammed as we have around 100 enrolments and they are trying to squeez us into e7b100. Never had alex blair before but now i know why his such a legend. he has great attitude and keen to teach, funny as well.

apparently we will have no tutorials. to those of you whos done summer before, how does that affect the learning process? did you have to dig up questions from textbook yourselves and practice?

bb

 

[williamc]

Yer im doing MKTG 207.

flicked through the book yesterday looks pretty in-depth compared to 101.

 

[peter2]

Guys, well can you please explain this to me then! For ACCG105, by the end of all assessments, I was sitting on 34.4/35 which was in the top 10 out of 1200+ students doing this subject. When the final came around, I was really confident I would obtain minimum Distinction and hopefully a HD. However, the stupid asians fucks full set a hard exam which, to my knowledge at least 25% failed the subject whereas in previous years, people were stating that this subject is the easiest subject in the whole commerce degree!!! Anyways, besides that, I only obtained a Credit-73 which I was soooooo fuckkking pissed off. I checked my final exam script viewing and saw I obtained 64/100 for the exam which was bullshit since I nailed every single part except 2 questions. One question was on cash flow statement (WHich I believe no one would of been anywhere close to the answer) and bank reconciliation (same as cash flow statement) where I only obtained 2 and 3 respectively out of 25 marks. I calculated my final grade and it should of been 76-DISTINCTION meaning the FUCKWITS did bring my grade down because of the stupid SNG. Anyway explain this to me then other than the stupid fucks setting a strict no. of D and HD's?????????????

 

[Mathmatics85]

I nailed every single part except 2 questions.

Its good that you killed the pre-final assessments, but this is the part where it proves you don't deserve a distinction. Usually in unis, especially where the subject is reasonably doable than other subjects and easier to score higher marks, its those 1 or 2 questions that differentiates CRs and Ds, same for Ds and HDs. If you want a guaranteed D next sem, make sure you know all the topics. If you haven't studied enough of lets say, 2 weeks worths of topics and give unsatisfactory attempt in the final then your lecturer will have more than enough reasons to place you in CR range.

 

[peter2]

Its good that you killed the pre-final assessments, but this is the part where it proves you don't deserve a distinction. Usually in unis, especially where the subject is reasonably doable than other subjects and easier to score higher marks, its those 1 or 2 questions that differentiates CRs and Ds, same for Ds and HDs. If you want a guaranteed D next sem, make sure you know all the topics. If you haven't studied enough of lets say, 2 weeks worths of topics and give unsatisfactory attempt in the final then your lecturer will have more than enough reasons to place you in CR range.

It shouldn't really work like that. I know what you are trying to say and such but I am very confident that about 85% of the students would not have been able to do those 2 questions. So your saying that because I screwed up 2 questions on an exam, even though all my other parts were very good etc. I would only get a credit because the lecturer expects a distinction or hd student to do good in ALL parts?

 

[BoganBoy]

Hi peter2 if you want to blame anyone, blame the actuaries. because accg105 is a must do for all first year actuaries. I know a few of my juniors whos taken this unit last sem and they have ALL scored HD. they all thought the exam was very easy so i suppose thats what bumped you down to a Cr.

stuffing up 2 questions in accg105 is pretty big of a stuff up i must say. no hard feelings, just dont pick any more units actuaries do in the future.


bb

 

[peter2]

Hi peter2 if you want to blame anyone, blame the actuaries. because accg105 is a must do for all first year actuaries. I know a few of my juniors whos taken this unit last sem and they have ALL scored HD. they all thought the exam was very easy so i suppose thats what bumped you down to a Cr.

stuffing up 2 questions in accg105 is pretty big of a stuff up i must say. no hard feelings, just dont pick any more units actuaries do in the future.


bb

Stupid Actuaries. Beating me with their accounting. I bet I would beat them any day in any legal problems and essay writing etc. Bastards. But hey thanks for your tip. Appreciate it BB. Cheers

 

[weiwern28]

Unless if you have someone doing a double with law.

 

[kevinant]

By the way, summer school is rip-off for locals, bargain for internationals, that's why lots of international students are doing them and we as locals don't touch it much.

Guys, well can you please explain this to me then! For ACCG105, by the end of all assessments, I was sitting on 34.4/35 which was in the top 10 out of 1200+ students doing this subject. When the final came around, I was really confident I would obtain minimum Distinction and hopefully a HD. However, the stupid asians fucks full set a hard exam which, to my knowledge at least 25% failed the subject whereas in previous years, people were stating that this subject is the easiest subject in the whole commerce degree!!! Anyways, besides that, I only obtained a Credit-73 which I was soooooo fuckkking pissed off. I checked my final exam script viewing and saw I obtained 64/100 for the exam which was bullshit since I nailed every single part except 2 questions. One question was on cash flow statement (WHich I believe no one would of been anywhere close to the answer) and bank reconciliation (same as cash flow statement) where I only obtained 2 and 3 respectively out of 25 marks. I calculated my final grade and it should of been 76-DISTINCTION meaning the FUCKWITS did bring my grade down because of the stupid SNG. Anyway explain this to me then other than the stupid fucks setting a strict no. of D and HD's?????????????

Whoa 34.5/35!!! I only got 30/35 for other assessments.
However, the exam should be easy as i got 90%+ in the exam paper with HD... The lecturer already cut-off several parts off in the paper (e.g. liability) which made it easier than the assignment. For Cash Flow Statement and Bank Reconciliation Statement, you should be able to check whether or not you are wrong in the exam since there are some checking mechanism (Direct and Indirect), if the answer wrong it's obviously wrong when you try to do reverse.
And btw, did you do these weirdo questions in the textbook (Hard questions, not these easy tutorial ones) before the exam? if you did you should be familiarise with CFS and knowing exactly what to do in the exam question which is so much easier.

P.S. I thought the most difficult thing in ACCG105 is to get the concept of credit and debit around the head?! not CFS or BRS, that's why I had lower assesment mark.

 

[mserica]

anyone doing busl350 or phil 137? i missed my first class at busl350 care to help out? like if you got an online outline it ud b much appreciated! or any comments on the first class and where to start off anything!!

Taz Im doing BUSL350 - it was a long long day, btw they changed the classroom. Are you coming on Sunday 18th?

 

[xeuyrawp]

By the way, summer school is rip-off for locals

Some may consider paying the $3K (or whatever it is) to get a degree and get into the workforce now is better than waiting to do one subject in sem 2 of 2009 (which is frequently the case).

But I agree that it's expensive.