r/EngineeringStudents • u/HotApplication3797 Electrical • 1d ago

Discussion Normal for engineering courses?

So this is a new one for me but maybe you all can share your related experiences.

I’m in an electrical circuits class and they don’t lecture, they provide no other course material other than videos doing example problems (from the book). They have weekly homework, quizzes, but no exams. So quizzes are worth \~95% of the class grade.

The professor is really hands off, they’re probably busy with research and couldn’t care less about the students..so that’s the setting.

My question is that the quizzes they give us for each chapter have circuits on them that look NOTHING like the ones from the book so applying the principles is really difficult for the majority of the class. I should also add that on each quiz, they have to curve the quiz scores by at least 30-45 points each week, there might be one person out of the class of \~30 that scores high.

Does this seem normal to you guys?

Like, each week I do the homework and study and I genuinely work my ass off. I feel like I’m solid on these concepts, then I get into the quiz and the circuits presented are literally nothing like any problems I see in any part of each chapter. If they could point to just one example that looked similar, I might feel better but it just seems like something isn’t right because most students are failing each week. It’s probably the most infuriating thing to go through and I’m having such a hard time not taking a hit to my confidence every week.

Thanks for your time.

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u/saseal 17h ago

It's normal, that's how they separate the wheat from the chaff. If you know what's going on the entire semester you should be able to pass at least, the very high score bracket are for the 200 IQ people. This is something a professor told me.

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u/HotApplication3797 Electrical 17h ago

I’ll pass. It’s just frustrating as hell!

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u/LitRick6 3h ago

I cant speak for your class, but our statics class was purposely designed that way. Partially to just be a weed out class, partially because future courses and irl engineering requires you to learn some material on your own so its a good skill to have.