Ever studied for an exam and felt prepared but failed?

You don’t know that you failed, you are speculating on how difficult the test was. You might have done much better than you thought.

And, since it was a mid term and not the final, you will be better prepared next time, as you even mention.

I have had tests that confounded me even though I thought I was prepared, usually because I had emphasized the wrong areas in my studying.

Definitely talk to the teacher after you get the test back; that’s what office hours are for!

Yeah, I remember several times where I (or even the whole class) were surprised by an unexpectedly hard or divergent test, even when I thought I was on top of everything.

I also remember having one final that I thought I’d done well on and then found out I hadn’t – it had me decide to change majors because I was tired of that sort of experience. I know someone who was PhD-track in mathematics and had a similar experience and it had her choose a completely different type of work.

In another case perhaps even more like yours, all the undergrads failed a final because the teacher had it be on what we thought was entirely optional related readings and nothing on what we had learned! In that case the prof was slightly embarrassed but also indignant, and his solution was to assign us all a final research paper out of the blue, during finals week! Argh!

I agree it sucks.

Bright sides: If the rest of the class was just as challenged (and it sounds like they were), the prof may likely adjust the grading scale to compensate.

The best advice I have for avoiding such in future is to check with the prof, the TAs, and previous students who took the class, to see if that’s happened in this course with this prof before… but that’s a lot of research especially since in my experience it’s relatively rare. And as long as you were doing everything and as prepared as the other students, you won’t be behind the others. One of the lessons of academia is that unfair annoying grades and other situations happen, and how to be about them.

Also, it’s just a grade and a few lower grades tends to actually have zero impact on anything, especially if you actually did well in the class but the grade is just off.

Thanks. It seems it’s pretty common. I don’t remember experiencing it.

Yes. That is why I don’t hope I’ll pass nowadays.

Never relax too much.

Turns out I passed with a 77%, which I’m very happy with because I thought I failed. He said we had historical above averages as a class which is sad because we had many c’s and d’s!!