I have added two sample (historical) exams per midterm to the website. I have chosen to post the exams because (for better or worse) there are organized groups in this university that effectively collect course content and distribute it to a minority of students. I am trying my best to give everyone the equality of opportunity (see the drop policy, etc.) that I wish I had in school, so I’m just releasing the exams for everyone to use.
That being said, the practice exams should be the last thing you do when studying for this course. Here’s what I would recommend you do in order:
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Go over the lectures and make sure you can easily answer the questions (well-defined and abstract/conceptual) posed during the lecture. This will ensure you have a solid intuition of the material.
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Go over the labs and make sure you can complete the lab problems without the aid of the solutions. If you need to look at the solutions, that means you haven’t fully mastered the material? You should have a timer and set it for 10 minutes and struggle with the problem for 10 minutes before looking at the solution (and only look if you are hopelessly stuck). There are a few minor points I want to make here:
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It will seem like you’re moving at a crawl at first. But that won’t last forever. As I tried to emphasize at the end of Lecture 7, all this knowledge is connected and once you start mastering the few basic things, that knowledge will build on itself exponentially.
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Of course the lab problems are going to be more difficult than what you will see on the test. You only have a few minutes for the test problems and unlimited time for the lab problems. The point of labs is to train on the most difficult problems so that the test problems are effectively trivial.
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Take the practice exams and look for the areas where you feel weakest.
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Look at a few textbooks on the subjects you feel the weakest and attempt to do the textbook problems.
I firmly believe that if you do all this, failing this course (or even get a bad grade) is almost impossible. But it’s the putting in of the effort that is the tricky part. I know you guys have competing priorities and you’re always simply trying to get to the next deadline, but learning conceptual material cannot be brute-forced. Your mind needs time to digest the material and appreciate the full consequence(s) of what you learned. This is just a way of saying that consistently going to lectures and labs will ultimately save you time in the end.
Good luck with your studies and I hope that everyone masters the upcoming midterm(s).
I need to add this disclaimer: the posted exams make no guarantees or promises about the exams you’ll take for this semester. Every semester is different, so the exam this semester might be easier than the exams from the previous semesters, might be harder this semester. There may be a subject that wasn’t covered in previous semesters that is covered this semester.