In my opinion, Tech professors took great pleasure in making the questions on the tests way harder than they needed to be. They were not representative of the homework problems or the material we went through in class. That was the case in most of my classes. The quality of students at Tech should not have struggled as hard as we did. I've heard things have changed, somewhat.
Reminds me of a story my dad told about Fluid Dynamics when he was there in the early 70's. He had studied regularly for this class, but like most people, he found it a tough one to grasp.
Said he walked into a test, and there were the typical 3 questions (that took you all 1.5 hours to get through). He looked at the first one, and thought "Nope, can't answer that one." Looked at Question 2: "Wow. I'm having a hard time even understanding what the professor wants." Then looked at question 3: "Is this even something we covered? I've never seen this sort of thing before in my life."
Then at the bottom of the page, he saw an asterisk that read something like:
*HINT: If a = q, then wouldn't b & h be the same as [some other random thing]?
He looked back at Question 1. It made perfect sense. He worked through it.
Looked at Question 2. It also made more sense, and he struggled through it.
Looked at Question 3. It still didn't make sense, but based on what he had done in the first 2 questions, he thought he could muddle through it. He did, and was able to finish the exam and turn it in before time was up.
The next week, the professor came in, sat down his things, and looked around at the room. He handed out the tests, and as he was doing so, he said (in his usual measured, enunciated Asian dialect), "Very unfortunate some of you took the
incorrect hint at the bottom of last week's test."
