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Just discussed an exam from last semester with a buddy. I had thought I killed the exam. Turns out there was a word limit. Went back to check, and I was 1000 words over a 3000 word limit. How screwed am I?

That bad, eh?

Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

He'll probably just stop reading at the word limit

Ludovico Technique wrote:He'll probably just stop reading at the word limit

While I'd be bummed if he did that, I guess it's the best I can hope for. The worst would be those professors who allegedly deduct a point for every ten words over or so.

delusional wrote:

Ludovico Technique wrote:He'll probably just stop reading at the word limit

While I'd be bummed if he did that, I guess it's the best I can hope for. The worst would be those professors who allegedly deduct a point for every ten words over or so.

I would agree with Ludovico. Stopping at the word limit is the only penalty I've heard of with word limits. Deducting points for every 10 words seems really unnecessarily harsh.

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

3|ink wrote:

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

That would be awesome!

delusional wrote:

3|ink wrote:

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

That would be awesome!

see underlined

3|ink wrote:

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

then it wasn't really a word limit, was it? in any case, based on the other responses it seems like that's going to be the exception.

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:

hichvichwoh wrote:

3|ink wrote:Who knows? It depends on the professor. But a smart professor wouldn't take away points unless he explicitly warned you that you would lose points if you exceeded the word limit.

"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

then it wasn't really a word limit, was it? in any case, based on the other responses it seems like that's going to be the exception.

That's what they called it.

that's fine, whatever, i'm not calling you a liar or anything, just pointing out that your situation seems to be uncommon, and that op should be prepared for some negative consequence of going over the word limit

3|ink wrote:

delusional wrote:

3|ink wrote:

hichvichwoh wrote:
"smart" is a pretty strange word to use here. it actually sounds kinda dumb for a prof to put a word limit on an exam and have absolutely no consequence for going over.

All of mine did this. They wanted to give students an idea of their expectations. And they all explicitly said there was no penalty for going over.

That would be awesome!

see underlined

Aw now you ruined it...

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Every professor I've had that enforced word limits simply stopped reading once the word limit was reached. One professor said he actually has the registrar print only up to the word limit (I'm sure they love this).

I did something similar last year OP. Had a 3500 word limit that I completely ignored and wrote something like 4200. Professor did a percentage based deduction based on how far I went over the wordlimit. The good part was that he actually graded every word I wrote and then just a proportional deduction; if he had stopped at 3500 I would have got no credit for 1.5 out of 5 questions. The "bad" part was he actually graded the whole exam and told me what I would have gotten had I not violated the word limit, which just made it all the more demoralizing when I saw the final grade I could have had and then the grade that was on my transcript.

Hopefully if you really did kill the exam, your professor will be like mine and reward your knowledge and effort by grading the whole exam and then take off points for the technical violations at the end.

By the way, this was an in-class exam. I tend to think that the draconian "I stop reading at word X" rules are really only enforced on takehomes where everyone could exceed the word limit if they wanted to since there's no time limit. That seems more like flagrantly gaining an unfair advantage. On a regular 3 hour issue spotter, word limits seem to be more like giving expectation guidelines and the time limit usually evens the playing field so the penalties are less severe, if there are any at all.

Just came across this topic again while looking for an old post. I'll fill in the end of the story in case someone in a similar situation searches TLS for "exam word limit".

I got a good grade on the exam. When I discussed it with the professor, she said the consequence of going over the word limit was that she usually gave a bonus to people who hit a particular number of issues in a given question, but she didn't give that bonus to me because it took me too many words to hit all the issues.

delusional wrote:Just came across this topic again while looking for an old post. I'll fill in the end of the story in case someone in a similar situation searches TLS for "exam word limit".

I got a good grade on the exam. When I discussed it with the professor, she said the consequence of going over the word limit was that she usually gave a bonus to people who hit a particular number of issues in a given question, but she didn't give that bonus to me because it took me too many words to hit all the issues.

Holy crap that's lucky. Plenty of profs just stop reading at the cutoff.

My Crim law prof sent out the three top exams in our class after the final. All of them exceeded the word count (one by over a thousand words). I was furious.

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