What the...?!?

[Barry the Sprout]

Yesterday I had an exam - Microeconomic Principles. It wasn't one I was prepared for very well, to say the least. But anyway. About one hour into the three hour exam a fire alarm went off, the whole building had to be evacuated - 7 floors of students, most of them doing the same exam. So we all waited on the pavement outside the building and discussed the exam... talked about how the questions had gone, asked friends how to do certain questions, the usual. We did this in the certain knowledge that they couldn't possibly send us back into an exam that counts for a possible 1/5th of our degrees after we'd had the opportunity for 3/4 of an hour to talk about it. So what did they do? Yeah, thats right... they sent us back in.

This should appear like a godsend, particularly in a hard exam, but there are several things that really, really, annoyed me about it:

1. They didn't make up the time taken out by enough. We were out for 3/4 of an hour and were only given half an hour to make up for it. Not good... ran out of time.

2. Despite having looked through the entire paper in despeation for the first few minutes I couldn't think of anything specific to ask people about.... I was reduced to wandering around in a shell shocked daze and feeling saddened by the enthusiasm my friends seemed to be showing for the paper.


3. As I've touched on above - everyone I talked to when we came out after the fire alarm reckoned that the paper was easy. But then after the whole paper was finished they all seemed to think that it had in fact been really difficult after all. In some ways this makes me feel slightly better, but a fail is still a fail - no matter how many people get one.

4. The exam board have e-mailed us all to say that the situation will be "taken into account" when grading the papers. What does that mean!!! Are they going to add marks on for the disruption? Are they going to take marks off for the ability to blatantly cheat? They won't say exactly what they're going to do, they're just going to take it into account...

All because the examiners can't be bothered to re-schedule it and use the reserve paper. Very frustrating.

[Vaskez]

I think they took into account the fact that you had had 45 mins to talk about the paper which is why they only gave you 30 mins to make up for it: i.e. they reduced the time in the exam to compensate for the fact that you had probably gained extra knowledge - sounds fair to me.

Also when "taking into account" yes I think they mean they will see what the average grade is and if it is low they will argue that it is because of the distraction and add 5% or so to everyone's marks. Once at our uni, in the year above me, everyone did really crap at Signal Processing and the average mark was 35% lol! So they gave everyone an extra 10%. That is very rare though because the exams are externally moderated as well to make sure that a Guassian distribution of marks is achieved by the class.

[Barry the Sprout]

I don't think thats why they knocked the quarter of an hour off - I think that was a mistake in the frenzy of trying to get us all down one flight of stairs and then back up again. The exam board are publically saying that they think we were only out for half an hour. I've yet to talk to a student who agrees.

But I think you're probably right about the grades. We'll see how it goes. At least the damn thing is over now.

[Finn]

Sorry to hear about your exam fracas, Barry.

I've had a similar experience myself. It was on the day of my "Professional Practice" paper. The exam was due to start in about 15 minutes and about half of the students were already inside the exam hall taking their seats. I was still hanging around with the others outside when an invigilator told us to clear the building.

"There's a bomb. get out!!!". So we high tailed away from the building. Seconds later, those who were already inside came running out like bats out of hell. We were told to wait a good distance away and the bomb squad arrived minutes later complete with metal detectors and sniffer dogs.

We waited for over an hour sweating bullets before the bulding was declared secure. Apparently, there was a phone tip-off about an alleged bomb threat and the University authorities didn't hesitate to take action by calling in the cops and evacuating the premises. Somehow or rather, the press got word of it and soon there were tv reporters everywhere. There we were worried sick, trying not to lose our composure thus rendering whatever we had learnt, memorised for the past few months thrown out the window whilst the cameras and microphones were thrust at our faces.

When things settled down, were told to go back into the exam hall. We sat at our seats obviously fazed and mentally wreaked after the ordeal earlier on. Then, the head invigilator told us that the exam was cancelled and that it was postponed to the week after. We were given new questions when we sat for the exam a week later as the previous examination questions had been compromised.

I think it was quite fair of them to issue us new questions as some of the students would've had an unfair advantage as they had a chance to look at the original questions. Moreover, we were obviously in no mental condition to proceed with the original exam.

So Barry, you're not alone. [img]smile.gif[/img]