Extra-credit exam

For PH253, the aforementioned extra credit exam will give you a maximum 2.5% added on to your grade, scaled by your performance on the exam. It will not be specific to HW or Exam grades, it will simply add to your overall average.

Specifically, I will take your % score on the test, multiply by 2.5%, and add it to your overall grade. If you score 80% on the exam, this means your overall average will increase by 2%. If you are on the borderline between grades, this is a big deal. For reference, 50% will be relatively easy to achieve, so you can get a better than 1% grade boost without much trouble at all.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but figure this: 9 homework sets are worth a total of 25% of your grade, or about 2.8% per homework set, so this could basically make up for one missed homework set completely. It would also be like adding 10% to either of your exam scores or the final ...

For PH255, the extra credit will add 10% to your lowest lab score. Given that some lab scores count more than others (e.g., final presentations) this can also be a big deal.

Also, there are prizes for the highest scores in each year (sophomore, junior, senior) and participation swag (2Gb flash drive for showing up). If you haven't RSVP'd already, let me know soon ...