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The exam is famously difficult, and he knew he had blown it, though he still doesn't think he blew it that badly. The choices ran A through E, and he thinks he skipped one, which is the excuse he gives. When the final grades went up, the exam grade read 19 out of 100 and the class grade was a D, the only D of his college career. He was crestfallen.
His best friend and roommate, Ed Deviney, was standing right behind him and burst out laughing. Ed's explanation was that after all that studying, a monkey could have sat there filling in circles and gotten at least a 20. He shied away from science as much as he could after that, and had to learn it later in life anyway.
Why do all Naval Academy students study chemistry?
The academy requires a technical core of all midshipmen, including chemistry, calculus, physics, and engineering, even for those majoring in the humanities. Naval officers work with propulsion plants, weapons, and shipboard systems that rest on those subjects. The academy has offered majors beyond engineering since the late 1950s, and the technical core has stayed in place.
Why do some tests penalize wrong answers?
A penalty makes the expected value of a blind guess zero, so random guessing no longer pays. The SAT subtracted a quarter point for each wrong answer on its five-choice questions for decades. The College Board dropped that penalty when it redesigned the test in March 2016.
Why can hard studying still produce a low score?
Study method matters as much as study time. A 2013 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest by John Dunlosky and colleagues rated rereading and highlighting as low-utility techniques. The same review rated practice testing and spreading study sessions over time as high-utility.
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