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[sappy drunk talk]. Nice find.

The data only come from one professor, and we don't even know what type of essay question he gave. Some questions can (and should) be answered in a crisp, concise analysis. For instance, a question like "how will the court rule on plaintiff's forum non conveniens motion" probably doesn't demand a twenty page analysis. On the other hand, on a typical issue spotter with more issues than you could hope to tackle in the allotted time (e.g. "discuss all potential tort claims arising from these events" in a question with ten different parties), typing as much as you can is probably the best approach, assuming what you are typing is relevant (i.e. application of law to fact).

I think the best approach is to figure out what type of questions your professor asks, and what he looks for in an answer. My torts professor gave us the two best student answers for each of his questions. For the issue spotters (assuming the students didn't deviate too much from the recommended time), the model answers were typed at a pace of more than 2,000 words per hour. That was the pace I aimed for during the exam. Did it help me get a good grade? Time will tell...

4500 word answer -- high A- (4 hr exam)
3500 word answer -- low A- (3 hr exam)

all the insight i can give

Cavalier raises good points. The OP quotage can be narrowed down to:

If you don't write much, you probably don't know what you're talking about.
If you write an average amount, you may or may not know what you're talking about.
If you write a lot, you may or may not know what you're talking about.

Nothing groundbreaking there.

btw this poll sucks because there is no standard, objective measurement for what a 'long answer' is.

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thesealocust wrote:

Lxw wrote:btw this poll sucks because there is no standard, objective measurement for what a 'long answer' is.

Yeah, it also sucks because it's anonymous and has a voluntary response bias. What's it to ya', punk?

well, instead of having two sources of potential fail, you could at least reduce it to just one source of fail.

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thesealocust wrote:pffbbt. I assume people know long answers when they seem them, and it's hard to standardize anyway. The best I could come up with is words typed per minute of exam time given, but forcing people to calculate that would either alienate people or invite errors in division, neh?

True, but at least you'd have an objective standard for what a long answer is, instead of asking people to subjectively evaluate whether they thought their answer was long or short (they will probably pick long if they did well, or think they did well, and short if they think they did poorly, or did poorly, regardless of the actual length of their answer).

I wish I could give you feedback but all of my exams had word limits...

I can tell you that the exam with the most liberal word limit I got an A on...

That is all.

I think it would be great if we could post anonymously here, instead of just the employment forum. In an anonymous post I (and many people here, I assume) would happily volunteer information about the length (and time) of our exams and how we did on them.

I have some data points on this, but I don't want to disclose them 'cause everyone else at UVA will ostracize me for posting grades.

Edit: Yeah, what Cavalier just said.

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Lxw wrote:4500 word answer -- high A- (4 hr exam)
3500 word answer -- low A- (3 hr exam)

all the insight i can give

wait. time out.

you made that huge drama thread about dropping out, and you have two A-minuses?

wiseowl wrote:

Lxw wrote:4500 word answer -- high A- (4 hr exam)
3500 word answer -- low A- (3 hr exam)

all the insight i can give

wait. time out.

you made that huge drama thread about dropping out, and you have two A-minuses?

That's only two grades though. Perhaps the others were way below median.

JazzOne wrote:

wiseowl wrote:

Lxw wrote:4500 word answer -- high A- (4 hr exam)
3500 word answer -- low A- (3 hr exam)

all the insight i can give

wait. time out.

you made that huge drama thread about dropping out, and you have two A-minuses?

That's only two grades though. Perhaps the others were way below median.

the quote in the thread was something along the lines of "I flubbed all my classes".

betasteve wrote:For the effort of data collection, I can collect data via PM, for this thread only) and then post it without naming the poster or school. This is really no different than the employment forum, except that in this manner, only 1 mod (me) can identify the actual poster, instead of all of them.

If PM'ed to me, I will not disclose to anyone the source of my information or link the posted anonymous data to the posted that PM'ed it to me.

I'd be happy to participate in this, but I have no idea how to re-open my exams in Exam4. My contracts final had word limits, but I'd be happy to give Beta the data from my torts exam.

wiseowl wrote:

JazzOne wrote:

wiseowl wrote:

Lxw wrote:4500 word answer -- high A- (4 hr exam)
3500 word answer -- low A- (3 hr exam)

all the insight i can give

wait. time out.

you made that huge drama thread about dropping out, and you have two A-minuses?

That's only two grades though. Perhaps the others were way below median.

the quote in the thread was something along the lines of "I flubbed all my classes".

Maybe they curve to an A-? lol

Maybe they were midterm grades? jesus fucking christ a guy cant say shit on these boards without having it questioned at every step.

Lxw wrote:Maybe they were midterm grades? jesus fucking christ a guy cant say shit on these boards without having it questioned at every step.

Why do you say that?

Lxw wrote:Maybe they were midterm grades? jesus fucking christ a guy cant say shit on these boards without having it questioned at every step.

then maybe that should have been said. i don't think midterm grades and final grades should be compared.

and sorry, but when you make a 4 page post about how awful your grades were and then come in a thread and post A-minuses, shouldn't you expect a little head scratching?

This poll assumes the dozens of different professors we have want exactly the same thing. I had profs tell us that they didn't want long answers, for example.

.