The second semester has concluded and the grades are slowly trickling in. Grades for ECE 570, Computer Networks, are as follows:

• Midterm Exam, 86%
• Quiz 1, 60%
• Homework 1, 100%
• Homework 2, 106%
• Homework 3, 98%
• Homework 4, 100%
• Homework 5, 95%
• Final Project, 98%
• Final Exam, 66%

Final average: 86.44% (A)
Costs: $2040 (tuition) + $73.89 (books)

Quiz 1 was dropped entirely for most students because of the low results overall. Despite the low numerical final exam grade, I received the highest score on the final project in the class and that was enough to keep me at an ‘A’ (4.0) in this course for the semester. Numerically, these scores were considerably lower than CSC 501, but the difficulty was far higher and this is reflected in the grade distribution through scaling.

I’m still waiting on the results from CSC 510, Software Engineering, but I’ve once again decided to sign up for two courses in the Spring 2008 semester: ECE 515: Digital Communications, and ECE 520: Digital ASIC Design.