the first in-school exam – a real jaw-dropper

this saturday i had my first in-school exam, 3 hours, open book, internet connection, all that (no communication allowed though, just research).

it was from 9 in the morning… and we went prepared, i took an extension cord with me, so if my laptop battery runs out, than i have where to plug it. when i got to the room, the first jaw-drop – the entire room was full with extension cords under each table, set up by the school.

ok, once i got over this, i went in, showed my student id to the lady and she asked me if i wanted to write it on the laptop of on paper. since i was writing it on my laptop, i brought a usb stick so i can give the paper to them afterwards.

now comes the second jaw-drop. when i told her i was writing it on the computer, she gave me a usb stick to put it on.

as it turns out, everyone (who was writing it on a laptop) got a separate usb stick.

after the initial surprise, i sat down, there was 1 paper on the table with all the exam rules and rights, another 2 papers that i had to fill out and an envelope, that also had to be filled out with the exam id (every student has a separate exam id – shown on the student id card). when i was done, i put the usb and in the envelope and sealed it and handed it over to the supervisor.

of course, you are allowed to drink, eat, go to the bathroom, etc. during the exam

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the people who did it on paper were also kind of happy the paper they give you to write on has 3 layers – you need to hand in 2 and 1 stays with you so you’ll have a copy as well (which is kind of sweet, in case you have objections regarding your grade).

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ok, so far i have discussed the technicalities, i think it’s only fair i tell you a little bit about the subjects as well.

there were 4 subjects (3 hours): the first one was a recent antitrust case from 1 week ago about Microsoft; the second one was about entry of apple/iphone/ipod touch on the game consoles market and competition and how this will affect the market and the game industry; the 3rd question was a relatively simple math question and the last one was about formulating a research question and research methodology, designing the ideal dataset to answer that question (in an econometric manner) – the topic of this question was how to maximize ticket sales of a movie theater.

so this was the first written exam.

the first 12-hour exam :)

yesterday was a big day for science

i had my first 12 hour exam. and no, we didn’t stay 12 hours in a bench at school…

at 9 o’clock in the morning, we downloaded the exam from campusnet and hat to upload the solution until 9 at night. so it was an internet exam or take-home exam if you will.

i don’t want to bore everyone with details, but the main idea is that it was lots of work (full 12 hours of work) but in the same time it was a much more hands-on approach to evaluating knowledge.

i’ll just copy a part of it, the first problem:

“Imagine the following situation: You are hired as a consultant by the ministry of labour. The ministry of labour wants to make training program for unemployed individuals. The goal is to increase their employment probabilities. Your job is to design a data collection strategy and perform an evaluation of the training program.

a) How should the ministry decide who should receive the training?

b) What information on the unemployed individuals will you suggest to collect? Why?

c) Describe the evaluation method that you will apply.”

This was the “soft” question, the rest of the problems were evaluating econometric models and interpreting them, suggestions to better them, etc.

all-in-all, it was a good trial by fire.