[xaedes]

I had an CS exam where I was familiar with all the topics asked and knew all the answers and even how to apply them, well despite some quirks surely ;P

But some questions in the exam required us to apply some algorithms by hand. I knew how they worked and I could also do them by hand. Did it on whiteboard with toy problems while studying for it. But what I didn't really expected was how fast the time run with manual execution on paper.. Even for modest data sizes.

I thought that the algos really could be improved to be much faster by hand, refactor to optimize for different operation costs when doing by hand given the available tools in the exam, reducing operation costs by speeding up hotspot manual steps by training right into muscle memory and better memory alignment on paper for faster data lookups in the first place.

I probably could have finished that exam in time, but with a baaad score. So I just quit and gave them a blank paper with my name to try again next time.

I knew what the real problem was: time, and I had a plan how to prepare for it. It worked =)

[dvlsg]

An exam where you can hand in a blank paper to try again later and not just get a 0 seems like it would be uncommon. I certainly never had that experience.

[Scarblac]

Well, you'd get a 0, but then you can try again (in my experience in the Netherlands).

What's the alternative, be forced to drop out of university once you fail an exam?

[dvlsg]

Interesting. My experience was in the US, and I would have kept that 0 unless my professor was feeling _very_ generous. I don't think it would be completely unheard of to have a professor with a policy like you described, but I never ran into it.

We wouldn't have been forced to drop out (at least not due to that exam in isolation), but the 0 would have been considered as part of our final grade for the course.

[Scarblac]

My experience is that the exam is at the end of the course, so the 0 would be your grade for the course. And you can't finish your degree without passing grades on every course in the degree, so if there were no second chances then that would mean the end of your study.

At my university the year was divided into three trimesters with exam periods at the end, and a fourth exam period at the end of summer holiday. Each exam period would have the exams of all the courses of the previous trimester and also exams of courses of the trimester before for people who still needed to pass that course. If you fail the exam twice, you have to try again when the exam is given again next year (or try to argue with the prof to get special arrangements, say if it's the only one you still need for your degree).