Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Quote

Paraphrase

Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project. --- UVA Microbiologist Martin A. Schwartz

The emphasis is my own.

posted by Y.H.N.

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