What was your most difficult exam at university?

It was the last exam I sat -- the second exam of the Biological Computation MSc at York (this course is now defunct and replaced with  bioinformatics).  A mix of computer science, statistics and mathematics that set my head spinning.
I looked at the first question, which was calculus, and my mind went blank -- that was the first time that had ever happened to me, I'd always been good at exams.

Still passed thanks to my computer science knowledge.
My wife also passed thanks to her math knowledge (we weren't married then).

Herbie

I had an Operating Systems and Advanced Architecture exam earlier today... Easy and fun... Semaphores, mutexes, IPC, etc...

Yes, maths is the hardest, no doubt.

Advanced Calculus was for me; my minor field of study is/was Mathematics. Those tests were as hard as corundum.

Artificial Intelligence....

Mine was Manipulator Robotics, it was something to do with robotic arms. Lots of maths and matrices in weird (I need to watch my language) notation.

Calculus for technology

its the idiots form of calculus at IUPUI (Indiana University and Purdue University of Indianapolis).  it proved to me i'm not smart enough to be an engineer which required more in depth calculus...

The reason i employ a Physicist and a Math Professor to do my math

Ion Todirel wrote:



Manip wrote: I had an Operating Systems and Advanced Architecture exam earlier today... Easy and fun... Semaphores, mutexes, IPC, etc... Yes, maths is the hardest, no doubt.

Yes OS is fun. Advanced Architecture? what is it?

In this case OS == UNIX / General and "Advanced Architectures" == UNIX Shell programming.

For some reason they decided to make the exam a standard OS Concepts exam but added UNIX shell programming coursework which has very little to do with the rest of the subject material.

Continuous Mathematics, without a doubt. Not because the math was so hard, but because you weren't allowed to use a calculator, and I suck at doing math on paper (or worse, in my head). First time around I took that exam I got a spectacular 2.5 out of 10. Made it up the year after and passed with 7.5.

Another quite difficult one was "Programming and Correctness", a course which dealt with formal methods for proving correctness (Dijkstra's Guarded Command Language, anyone?), which was quite hard. I did pass this one in one try though, with an 8 iirc.

Organic chemistry. I hated memorizing all that crap. I made a 'C'. It wasn't a science course so much as a library course. My favorite chemistry classes were physical chemistry: two semesters of learning to heat and cool water, basically. All quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and other fun stuff. Made an 'A' in those. *thumps chest*

Sven Groot wrote:

Another quite difficult one was "Programming and Correctness", a course which dealt with formal methods for proving correctness (Dijkstra's Guarded Command Language, anyone?), which was quite hard. I did pass this one in one try though, with an 8 iirc.

We don't have that course... Which isn't surprising considering correctness constraints have been pretty debunked as a programming paradigm and as such aren't used my any mid to large organisation.

Intelligent Text Analysis for me. I was able to do the programming assignments without a problem, but the lectures were sooo boring and the tests were all about proving my teachers theories correct...

Chemistry really cooked my goose in university. It took me 2 years to get through the course and I barely made pass mark when I did manage to get through. Whew, am I glad it's over.