Coffeelover

I am interested in pursuing a master's degree, but want to know what the tests are like. I know its probably different for each school, but wanted to get an idea of what to expect in a master's program. How is it different from undergrad? Ideally, I want my grade to be based on more than just one test during the semester. I also want to avoid master's degree programs that are totally flooded with applicants. For example, some of the nursing programs around here have 500 applications for only 35 slots. Even with a 4.0 in your pre-reqs, you still might not get accepted. So I nixed nursing, at least for the time being.

I am not talking about students who are blatantly rude in class, act looney or show up late. That is actionable behavior that can affect your grade, of course. I am referring to professors who just don't care for certain students, for personal reasons.

I've been in college and also vocational schools. The vocational school instructors were worse, perhaps because they weren't as professional. They definitely had biases. One instructor was even asking his female students out on dates and getting mad when they weren't interested. In one case, he asked out a married student and harassed her when she said no repeatedly. I had problems with this same instructor (although he didn't ask me out), and eventually we all realized this guy had serious problems. Let's face it, teachers are only human and they can have the same problems as anyone else. I also had a female instructor in a nurse aide program at a local college: she was biased against older students, but with young students, she would be motherly toward them and encourage them. With the older students, she would roll her eyes at us and make sarcastic comments. She started nit-picking at things we did during the clinical training at a hospital. We realized she was trying to grade us down. I want to be able to identify problem professors early on, so that I can manage my relationship with them. I did not at first realize these instructors had personal issues, and I was blind-sided. I really don't have much background in human psychology.

One of my undergrad professors specifically TOLD us that he had personal biases against certain students, and he had us do something similar. I respect him for at least being honest and trying to do something about his biases.

You are given a number for your exam, you never write your name on any test. That's how it was done at one college I attended. Perhaps they'd had problems in the past with professors who couldn't see past their personal biases.

Lately, I've been hearing so much about college professors (undergrad, grad) who cherry pick students they like to give good grades to. And even in more competitive schools where administration literally walk through classrooms, observe students, looking for people they want to "weed out" based on purely subjective factors like how the person looks, what the student "seems like", etc. It makes me want to throw up! They should base your pass/fail strictly on academic standards only. We aren't paying for someone to judge our personalities or appearances. This kind of garbage goes on in the corporate world all the time, but I thought academia would be different. Apparently not. So my question is, can you insist on anonymous grading at your university?

I graduated from college, but years later I had to take remedial algebra at a local college, because I had forgotten a lot of stuff. When you've been out of school for 20 years or more, that can happen!