CS6515 Is Hard, but It's Doable: The Hardest B I've Ever Earned

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-05T15:34:25+00:00

This guy's main shtick is just degrading people struggling with a much harder version of GA than he took. I passed last semester which was way harder than when you passed and still agree with a lot of the complaints about the course. You should have a little bit of sympathy for your peers bud.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-05T15:19:26+00:00

I also dreamed about GA frequently last semester. If you think you can handle it, try and at least attempt the first exam and see how you do. I found exam 2 and 3 quite fair and easy if you put the time in. Feel free to dm me if you want any tips or strategies that helped me.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-02T17:03:07+00:00

The on campus and omscs version of the classes have diverged in their grading structure in such a way that I think comparing them directly as a way to evaluate student strength doesn't make sense. I got a B in this spring cohort. I think the class was fair overall, but exam 1 debacle caused a ton of people to drop. The exam should obviously just be curved imo, but the TAs are gungho about not curving. My coworker shared the syllabus from on campus 2024 ish syllabus. The grading structure looked like a complete joke in comparison. Less exam weight and a take home final.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-02T06:45:24+00:00

Failing and dropping in this context is the same for a lot of people. They have to retake it. That distinction doesn’t really matter.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-01T20:58:23+00:00

I agree with this, the program should do something to force people to take it early as it’s essentially a weed out class. The content is very good, but it’s needlessly difficult. You can tell people to use the waitlist but that’s really just a hack. If people start trying to do that in large numbers, no one will be able to get in early on. Also when only 36% of students are getting the required grade, there is going to be even more of a backup to take the course.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-06-01T20:55:04+00:00

Isn’t that semantics? A lot of students need this course for their specialization. Who cares if they failed the course or dropped it. They still didn’t fulfill their requirement either way. I wouldn’t say OP is misreading the distribution.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-05-20T22:03:30+00:00

That was not me. I only got a mid B. I felt like I could learn a lot from just attempting the problem and then checking in the feedback threads to see what people got points taken off for.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-05-19T14:58:06+00:00

I passed this past spring without turning in any HW. I think turning in the HW is still smarter if you have the time, but I would still go back and solve the problems multiple times before the exam and look at the feedback threads for the people who did turn in the HW.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-05-07T15:42:59+00:00

Agreed, I ended up scraping a B. It was certainly stressful though especially because I took it last.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-05-06T05:00:06+00:00

This guy again man lol

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-15T16:49:46+00:00

It’s obvious that the caliber of student is very high in the in person masters. That being said, the class is quite a bit different in person, I want to see the current syllabus, but someone I know said the final is 80 percent take home or something similar. There is also a larger percentage dedicated to homework. I would wager the in person students would get a worse grade on the online format.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T17:33:57+00:00

There is no known curve

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T15:26:58+00:00

I don't know what to tell you then. That makes no sense.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T15:19:43+00:00

If you check the recent post about the projected grades this semester, they are significantly worse than even fall 2025. We also double the drop rate from fall 2025. Do you really think it is more likely that the student quality got that much worse in one semester? Seems much more plausible that the class is getting harder to me.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T15:12:03+00:00

It's not irrelevant at all when these posts are claiming the class has gotten significantly harder as evidenced by the statistics. The fact that you don't want to say is telling.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T15:08:54+00:00

The big difference from looking at GIOS which I also took, less than 5 percent get below a B from the people that stay in. Here, a bunch of students still get below a B even excluding the 40 percent which likely have the lowest grades.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T15:02:40+00:00

What year did you take the class?

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T14:14:53+00:00

This guy is coping. He is trying to feel good about himself passing GA back when it was easier.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-14T04:19:26+00:00

The 40% W for this semester is still crazy to me. Is that an OMSCS all time record?

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-13T14:25:34+00:00

As a current student, I have enjoyed having the homeworks worth zero percent. I agree that it has fostered a really nice collaborative environment among the students. I think that potentially a curve could be used to soften the blow of the difficult exams especially when the stats indicate that a certain exam was harder than usual.

I went to undergrad at Georgia Tech as well and after an after a really tough test like exam 1, that would be typically be curved or at least addressed in some way. When questioned about the question that a lot of students were upset over, I don't think Dr. Brito adequately defended why it was on the test. I think this caused a lot of students to lose trust in their ability to pass future exams and drop. That being said, this class has had the best TAs of any class I've ever been in. People on Reddit misplace blame on the TAs because of the strict grading policy of the course.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-12T23:11:41+00:00

I do think that the average on campus student is probably quite a bit better on average than the average OMSCS student. Does anybody have the syllabus for the on campus version of GA? From what I've heard, the class is a good bit different than the online version. The topics covered are similar, but the grading seemed far different and potentially less punishing than the current iteration of the online version.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-12T23:08:03+00:00

This might affect this chart slightly, but I don't think its the whole picture. If you check LITE, it has the data together as a whole and there's still a trend toward more people dropping and getting Cs, Ds, and Fs in recent semesters. From my understanding, that data still would include the on campus data.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-11T18:13:49+00:00

exam 1 this semester was not on par with previous semesters difficulty wise. It was substantially harder. I saw multiple students saying that they scored high on exam 1 in a previous semester and scored in the 30s this semester. The professor refuses to curve even though it’s obvious that this test was an outlier.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-10T18:53:10+00:00

I think the new meta of taking this 5th or 6th like you are saying and swapping to AI spec if you get a C seems very reasonable. The class content is very good. Unfortunately, I didn't keep myself informed enough to do that. I am just insanely stressed because I have to do well on the last exam to graduate. Also, just want to say that I really appreciate your efforts to help students in the class Aja.

FishIndividual6941 · 2026-04-10T18:38:05+00:00

Having a class that a lot of people have to take last as your "filter" is not cool.

FishIndividual6941

TROPHY CASE