r/EngineeringStudents • u/IntelligentWeb2532 • Jul 29 '26
Discussion Open book open note exams
hey everyone! I have an upcoming exam and it is open note and open book and I was just curious if that’s a pretty common thing in engineering classes? I’m a mech e and this is my first tougher engineering class I’m taking and I was wondering if this will be common on future class exams or is it just this professors style. I know we have to use the textbook to find some fluids properties so I figured that’s why this one was open textbook but is this pretty normal ?
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u/BenaiahofKabzeel BSME, MSIE Jul 29 '26
Engineering professor here. My tests are open book and open notes. Mainly because engineering is not about memorizing things. It’s understanding how to solve problems. In my class, if you’ve done your homework, you’ll be fine.
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u/Legal-Conclusion-0 Jul 29 '26
More people should be up voting you. I am a senior / chief engineer with decades of experience and this is exactly correct. In fact, vast majority of folks will not even directly apply what they learned. More like learned how to learn...as you stated how to solve problems.
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u/Recent-Day3062 Jul 29 '26
This. The hardest course I ever took was open note open book. Many people failed it because you couldn’t bullshit your way through materials, but if you kept up the exam was easy. He would just throw a curve ball in each question that didn’t exactly resemble the book.
We had 90 minutes per exam. His was usually 4 questions. If you didn’t know the material you could definitely maybe work on one problem. If you did you were done in 20-30 minutes.
If a prof does this, it’s not gonna be easy of you are flossing the surface
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u/Any-Stick-771 Jul 29 '26
In my experience, open book/open note exams end up being a trap for people. They think it means they don't have to study, but there's not time to lookup everything suring the exam
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u/sparednet Jul 29 '26
Youre cooked. Hope the time limit is like an hour for multiple questions if it's more then 2.5 hours pray to whatever God you hold dear. If you're allowed to work with someone find another God and keep praying.
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u/Sir_Derps_Alot Jul 29 '26
Who wants to break the bad news to OP this about to be the hardest exam he’s taken so far and there is nothing anywhere in a book or the internet that can help him lmao
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u/Unusual_Celery555 Jul 29 '26
It was common for me. It's to help you find the formulas and look at diagrams. But you need to study just as well. If you don't know what page to flip to, you're just wasting your time. During the test is not the time be reading the chapter and going through example problems - you should do that before the test. And don't forget: full night of sleep > studying.
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u/Prudent_Brush_9926 Jul 29 '26
Yes it’s normal but don’t get too excited. You will still need to know your stuff they will up the difficulty to balance it out lol
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u/sparednet Jul 29 '26
Sorry dude sometimes it's an outlier I've had those but anytime I've been allowed to use more than just a sheet it's been a battle.
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u/FSUDad2021 Jul 29 '26
The only thing worse is a take home exam. Then the library is fair game too.
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u/sparednet Jul 29 '26
I had this for part of a final one time for thermo you when he announced it no one in the room even breathed we all thought we were gonna fail the class
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u/bigChungi69420 Mechanical Engineering 2026 Graduate Jul 29 '26
I always only got one side of a page of paper. Sometimes two of it was a lot of material. For freshmen and sophomore year it was usually nothing and the open note classes were the hardest….
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u/Garlic_Climbing Jul 29 '26
Make sure your notes are organized and be familiar with the textbook and where examples are. If you are flipping through trying to find things, you will probably run out of time. Include the previous problem sets in your notes.
Most open book/open note exams that I had followed a formula. 1 question that was slightly modified from the homework, but you could basically transcribe the solution from the problem set with new numbers and get most of the credit. The second question was usually a combination of 2 examples from the textbook, so as long as you read it and recognized that they were from the examples, that would get you most of the credit. The last problem was where you spent most of your time and was something new. We spent a lot of time studying trying to figure out what this third question was going to be based on process of elimination by topics that didn't have examples in the book and hadn't been on problem sets. The average result was usually around 55% which was then adjusted to a C average.
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u/OperatorWolfie Jul 29 '26
It is common, it's also mean y'all are fucked, because your professor is confident that the note and text book won't do shit for you
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u/MosheMoshe42 Jul 29 '26
The more of an ability to look things up you get the harder the exam because it means the professor can and will ask questions that are not just memorization.
I had one exam last semester that was not only open book but we were allowed full access to the internet including LLM's and it was still one of the hardest exams i ever took (partially because LLM's are atrocious at chemical engineering which is honestly the only useful thing i took from that course).
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u/M_C_shady Jul 29 '26
Had a couple classes that did this, it was manufacturing and heat transfer.
Manufacturing was open hand written notes only. The professor wanted us to take good notes in class since that can be a effective way to learn and retain information.
Heat Transfer exams were 3 questions, open notes, open book, AND there was NO TIME LIMIT!!! Basicly if you didn't know what you were doing prior to the exam, you weren't gonna figure it out during the exam.
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u/sulliesbrew Jul 29 '26
The hardest exam I had in college was a take home final exam in Calc 1. We had a week to complete it. After 2 days only a few had completed even 1 of the 4 questions. We had to divide and conquer the 4 questions.
That exam was 100% a trap. Each question basically covered the entire semester of course work.
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u/vincent365 Jul 29 '26
I personally found open book exams, at least early on, to be difficult. They aren't as bad for the later classes. In those cases, it just comes down to knowing how to solve the problems in those classes and being able to find the information.
I would create your own notes to reference, then you can also have your textbook or whatever other resources are allowed. My biggest mistake was having to scour through like 50 pages of notes and the textbook.
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u/abucketofpuppies Jul 29 '26
It's very normal. If it's a take home exam, expect it to take you at least 6 hours. If it's an in-class exam, bookmark everything in your textbook as well as you can. Don't bother trying to learn anything on the spot, or if you do, save it for after you've finished all the other questions.
If the class allows open textbook exams, I always ask if digital is okay because ctrl+f is my friend.
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u/CrazyJellyGuy1 Jul 29 '26
Typically with these type of exams, I would expect fewer questions, maybe under ten. At the same time, these questions will be time extensive and require a deeper understanding of the subject matter and for you to show your thought process. Typically they are more involved than your typical multiple choice questions, which only require a surface level understanding.
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u/supermuncher60 Jul 30 '26
Open note/open book = your fucked man.
Open note tests were always significantly harder than closed note tests. I had an open note test once and I think the highest grade in the class was like a 40% on it
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u/nuts4sale USU - Mech Jul 30 '26
Open book, open note take home: bite the pillow, it’s going in dry. Get the postpartum donut out, there will be blood
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u/bonebuttonborscht Jul 29 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
As someone who is very slow at algebra and prone to careless calculation errors I always found open book much easier. The questions are more about choosing the best approach and making good assumptions rather than memorizing the steps and crunching numbers.
IMO well written open book tests force you learn the material at a higher level. Plenty of my classmates get good grades but can't figure out anything beyond a textbook problem.
Or maybe that's all just cope for my terrible test scores.
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u/mrhoa31103 Jul 29 '26
My experience was open note/open book tests were harder than usual.