Exam Return Speed (or lack of speed)

[lailanni]

How long does it take other schools to give exam scores back?

Here it varies a lot. One awesome professor will get them back the next day (handwritten exams, too!). Others take weeks, one of ours is currently taking a month, and one very unorganized (and not very popular) professor took nearly 2 months.

What is a reasonable return rate? At what point would you consider a delayed exam return a problem that could be worth mentioning to some kind of management?

I feel that if a exam is important enough to give, it ought to be important enought to grade and return promptly. Taking a month or longer is disrespectful to my effort given on the exam - plus I need results to guide my studying practices.

Thoughts?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Biomajir]

Well, I have graded a few papers in my day and it took me maybe two days to grade 30 papers and have them handed back. We have one instructor here who will take sometimes more than week just to hand back a scantron! I know there is a lot to grade and they have other stuff going on... but to me, grading is part of the job description and I just have never understood why it takes some instructors so long to get stuff graded. I am not sure if you can complain about it or not, we usually will politely ask when we can expect papers back but mostly just grit out teeth and wait.

 

[CBRGrl]

Here the exams usually take about a week to come back. BUT if we have a big exam (say, anatomy) the professors will generally wait to hand back a test until the day after our exam. I think its because they want you to go into every exam with as much confidence as possible...and not be worrying about another class...IMO

 

[SmallAndLA]

At K-State, we only have exams on Fridays in first year, and the turn around time varies.

Sometimes if the exam was all scantron, we'll have results in hours, thanks to one awesome lady. Most times, we have results back on Monday or Tuesday after the exam.

But, we have one professor who has a tendency to not get scores up for 1.5-2 weeks. And since I'm spoiled by my other professors, I'm pretty impatient.

If I had to wait 2 months for a grade, I would probably go insane.

 

[ANGEL2013]

generally in my school grades takes no more than 3 days
but if we have exams in the following days they'd wait untill the last 1
i've never in my life waited a month i dunno how can u wait without losin ur mind

 

[aretoo]

So far we've had 4 or 5 exams...one class we got marks the next day (scantron)...one took 3ish weeks...2 we haven't gotten back yet (I think it's been a month, or almost..)

 

[Bill59]

I think anything within a week is fine. A month seems too long.

In some cases the delay is due to students. If a student misses an exam and has to make it up, the professor often has to wait until that student has taken the test and has graded it before giving the exams back.

 

[elefante7]

I think the earliest we have gotten something back is two or three days and right now the longest is the one I'm waiting for right now. Physiology... If we get it back on Monday it will have been two weeks. I know that is not a month, but I really want it back!

 

[primatevetjess]

Our professors are generally really great about returning exams/grades. Even written portions usually only take a couple of days. However, tomorrow will be 3 weeks since we've taken our epidemiology final. It's really frustrating.

 

[sofficat]

We get anything from 2 days to 6 weeks! By now (3rd yr) once I take an exam I try to forget about it.

 

[MargoPlicatus]

At K-State, we only have exams on Fridays in first year, and the turn around time varies.

Sometimes if the exam was all scantron, we'll have results in hours, thanks to one awesome lady. Most times, we have results back on Monday or Tuesday after the exam.

But, we have one professor who has a tendency to not get scores up for 1.5-2 weeks. And since I'm spoiled by my other professors, I'm pretty impatient.

If I had to wait 2 months for a grade, I would probably go insane.

Well sure, it takes a while to get them back when the teacher takes vacation immediately after the test and then you find out 1.5 weeks later that one person still hasn't taken the test! Sorry, just a bit annoyed with that situation.

 

[LVT2DVM]

I feel that if a exam is important enough to give, it ought to be important enought to grade and return promptly. Taking a month or longer is disrespectful to my effort given on the exam - plus I need results to guide my studying practices. Thoughts?

I completely agree lailanni. Here it ranges from a week to a month. If its a midterm or a quiz the profs are pretty good about getting it back to us in time to study for finals but if its a final exam....well were still waiting on most final exam grades and we've taken 5 out of 8 finals....one was for a class that was completed 2 months ago and still no final grade.

 

[SmallAndLA]

Well sure, it takes a while to get them back when the teacher takes vacation immediately after the test and then you find out 1.5 weeks later that one person still hasn't taken the test! Sorry, just a bit annoyed with that situation.

REMEMBER THE MARGO PLICATUS!!!

*cough*

Yeah, that's really annoying. I was not pleased when I heard that announcement in class. Though I hope everything is okay, because that professor seems like he would not schedule a make up for anything that was not ridiculously serious.

 

[VetMed555]

It really depends on the professor here as well. We had a couple of awesome professors who would return written anatomy exams the next day, and your grade was available on blackboard THAT EVENING. I think the worst I've seen was 2+ weeks or so. People generally get cranky and start emailing/asking professors about the exams if it takes longer than 1.5 weeks.

 

[Mistoffeles]

we've only had one exam so far, and it took 2 business days to get the score. but we don't actually get told what we got wrong.

our final (singular, covering the entire semester) is next tuesday. we may get that back before we break up, or we may get the results some time over winter break. but we still won't be told what we got wrong.

 

[Angelo84]

we've only had one exam so far, and it took 2 business days to get the score. but we don't actually get told what we got wrong.

our final (singular, covering the entire semester) is next tuesday. we may get that back before we break up, or we may get the results some time over winter break. but we still won't be told what we got wrong.

Can you go review the exam with the key later? I know I find it really helpful to do this on exams I did worse than I thought on to see where I went wrong and also to see what the right answer actually is--because usually I put something because I think its right so fixing that in my head is necessary.

 

[starlene45]

we are approx 2 months out on our epidemiology final and still no results .
everything else comes back within a week, a decent proportion are posted online by the end of that day.

 

[Mistoffeles]

Can you go review the exam with the key later? I know I find it really helpful to do this on exams I did worse than I thought on to see where I went wrong and also to see what the right answer actually is--because usually I put something because I think its right so fixing that in my head is necessary.

no, no review allowed. they say the reason is that they want us to sacrifice some of the details for a good general understanding. the real reason is that they have a bank of questions that get reused over and over.

they're quite big on designing well structured multiple-choice questions here. the prevailing philosophy is that a good MCQ will function almost the same as a fill-in-the-blank -- if you cover up the choices, you should be able to answer the question and then find your answer in the list of choices. in practice, it doesn't always work that way . . . but usually, they're fairly unambiguous. the questions are ranked, with some requiring that you've gone beyond the "taught" knowledge, some based directly on the learning objectives given at the beginning of each lecture, and some being just regurgitation from the lecture slides.

they can gauge how the class is doing overall (and differentiate the ones really working hard v. those who are cruising) based on what percentage of people get which levels of question right. ideally, it breaks down to a gradual hyperbolic curve approaching the x-axis - a well designed test will have most people getting the middle questions right, very few getting the hard ones right, and very few getting the easy ones wrong.

we also don't get graded in the same manner as i'm used to. for example, the test on tuesday will be a grade only, which counts for 5% of our end of year grade, but it is not qualifying, meaning no pass or fail mark, and you don't need a certain score to proceed in the course. however, the essay that we have in the week following (which counts 7.5% of our end of year grade)*is* a qualifier, and you must pass with at least 50% to proceed. if you fail, you must submit a second essay and pass that, but no matter how well you do, you can only achieve a bare pass (50%) to carry forwards to the end of year grade.

we have another end of term exam in march, and then five exams at the end of the year: an MCQ (45-60 questions in 1 hour), a problem set (4 problems in 2 hours), and an essay set (6 essays in 3 hours), plus an oral exam and a practical exam. Those five tests count the major portion of the end of year grade.