VICTORY!! THE BOARD HAS OFFICIALLY AGREED TO LOWER THE PASSING RATE FOR OUR FINANCE EXAMS!! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HUGE AND PROVES THAT WE CAN ACTUALLY GET RESULTS WHEN WE UNITE!! KEEP A CLOSE WATCH ON YOUR GRADES AND REACH OUT IF ANYTHING LOOKS WRONG!!
July 6, 2015
Final supporters
Dear Board of Examiners,
Hereby we, first year International Business, Economics and Business Economics as well as Fiscal Economics students at Maastricht University, complain about the overall degree of difficulty in the Finance Exam, Maastricht, 3rd June 2015.
Specific complaints and explanations about the mistakes, that the examiner has made in our eyes, will be handed in due course. Given the amount of errors - the correct solutions of some simple calculations did not appear in the multiple choice answers - we were confused and became increasingly nervous during the exam. As a result, we spent excessive time on these tasks and hence were put under severe time pressure. This had a significant impact on our subsequent performance. Furthermore, we kindly want to point out our regrets that reading the Economist has not been specified in the course material, which would have been beneficial in hindsight.
In summary, we are highly concerned with regard to the current passing rate of 70% and would consider a decrease to 50% appropriate, as was the case in the Economics and Business Economics (2014-200-EBC1009) exam in the first semester.
We would appreciate it if you took our concerns into account when grading this exam and await a response.
Kind regards,
Updates
Reached 250 supporters
June 4, 2015
Reached 100 supporters
June 3, 2015
76 Comments
The exam was unfair and did not reflect the topics of the course at all. It was explicitly stated that the exam is based on chapters 1-13 & 20. Instead, the exam contained questions about chapter 15, topics that were NEVER discussed/mentioned in this course (tax breaks, equity puzzles, myopia), as well as an article from 'The Economist' (we were not told that it is exam-relevant).
Personally I think the questions about the news articles were misplaced. The topics in al of the questions about the articles were never covered in the course, and it was not possible to get the definition out of the context. Moreover, translating the fragments was really hard too, it was language and definitions that most of us have never seen before. At this point it should have been very useful to use a dictionary, however we were not allowed to. Answering these questions was just lucky guessing. Doing them wrong can influence the grades too much since there were multiple questions. This should be taken into consideration.
In my opinion, the opportunity or access to higher education should not be based on a certain "kick-out"-rate as the School of Business and Economics apparently set nor need to fulfill. The level of the exam was not comparable to past exams at all and therefore, the passing rate should be definitely lowered to 50 %.
Structuring the exam like a story line might have been a nice approach in the course coordinators eyes. However once you had problems with the story / company, i.e. not being able to calculate everything correctly, my nervousness and insecurity highly increased. This lead to a high decrease in concentration because I felt like I already failed miserably. Personally, the lowering of the passing rate won't help me and I think the course coordinator should reconsider his innovative approach to writing an exam and concentrate on the topics that were in the book as well as in the tutorials. I felt like most of the "gained knowledge" of the last 7 weeks did not help me pass this exam.
The questions were really confusing since it seemed like they refer to each other. Thus, if you had the previous question wrong you would keep miscalculating the following calculations.
I6083771
i6068057
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VICTORY!! THE BOARD HAS OFFICIALLY AGREED TO LOWER THE PASSING RATE FOR OUR FINANCE EXAMS!! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HUGE AND PROVES THAT WE CAN ACTUALLY GET RESULTS WHEN WE UNITE!! KEEP A CLOSE WATCH ON YOUR GRADES AND REACH OUT IF ANYTHING LOOKS WRONG!!
July 6, 2015
Final supporters
Dear Board of Examiners,
Hereby we, first year International Business, Economics and Business Economics as well as Fiscal Economics students at Maastricht University, complain about the overall degree of difficulty in the Finance Exam, Maastricht, 3rd June 2015.
Specific complaints and explanations about the mistakes, that the examiner has made in our eyes, will be handed in due course. Given the amount of errors - the correct solutions of some simple calculations did not appear in the multiple choice answers - we were confused and became increasingly nervous during the exam. As a result, we spent excessive time on these tasks and hence were put under severe time pressure. This had a significant impact on our subsequent performance. Furthermore, we kindly want to point out our regrets that reading the Economist has not been specified in the course material, which would have been beneficial in hindsight.
In summary, we are highly concerned with regard to the current passing rate of 70% and would consider a decrease to 50% appropriate, as was the case in the Economics and Business Economics (2014-200-EBC1009) exam in the first semester.
We would appreciate it if you took our concerns into account when grading this exam and await a response.
Kind regards,
Updates
Reached 250 supporters
June 4, 2015
Reached 100 supporters
June 3, 2015
76 Comments
The exam was full with grammar mistakes, confusing wording and simply was lacking the correct answers on some questions. When I practiced previous exams at home I scored fairly well, but due to the pressure and stress on this exam I scored at least 15 points lower.
The exam was unfair and did not reflect the topics of the course at all. It was explicitly stated that the exam is based on chapters 1-13 & 20. Instead, the exam contained questions about chapter 15, topics that were NEVER discussed/mentioned in this course (tax breaks, equity puzzles, myopia), as well as an article from 'The Economist' (we were not told that it is exam-relevant).
Personally I think the questions about the news articles were misplaced. The topics in al of the questions about the articles were never covered in the course, and it was not possible to get the definition out of the context. Moreover, translating the fragments was really hard too, it was language and definitions that most of us have never seen before. At this point it should have been very useful to use a dictionary, however we were not allowed to. Answering these questions was just lucky guessing. Doing them wrong can influence the grades too much since there were multiple questions. This should be taken into consideration.
In my opinion, the opportunity or access to higher education should not be based on a certain "kick-out"-rate as the School of Business and Economics apparently set nor need to fulfill. The level of the exam was not comparable to past exams at all and therefore, the passing rate should be definitely lowered to 50 %.
Structuring the exam like a story line might have been a nice approach in the course coordinators eyes. However once you had problems with the story / company, i.e. not being able to calculate everything correctly, my nervousness and insecurity highly increased. This lead to a high decrease in concentration because I felt like I already failed miserably. Personally, the lowering of the passing rate won't help me and I think the course coordinator should reconsider his innovative approach to writing an exam and concentrate on the topics that were in the book as well as in the tutorials. I felt like most of the "gained knowledge" of the last 7 weeks did not help me pass this exam.
The questions were really confusing since it seemed like they refer to each other. Thus, if you had the previous question wrong you would keep miscalculating the following calculations.
I6083771
i6068057
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The exam was full with grammar mistakes, confusing wording and simply was lacking the correct answers on some questions. When I practiced previous exams at home I scored fairly well, but due to the pressure and stress on this exam I scored at least 15 points lower.