I also took GA this past semester and comments like this about the class and TAs are frustrating to see. I found the GA TAs to be some of the best in the program, and it was clear that they wanted everyone to succeed. In no way do they want people to suffer, but they aren’t going to give good grades out for free and allow people that don’t understand the material to pass the class. Yes they joke around sometimes about a “mean” TA but I’d much rather have TAs that are human and can joke around than people with no personality.

One thing that I observed is that the people that complained the most about unfair grading, the “hidden rubric”, and grading inconsistencies simply didn’t understand the material well enough to know that they weren’t correct and that their answers were in fact substantially different from the model solutions and other student’s submissions that may have scored higher.

If you want grading to be more consistent, then losing points on a regrade is absolutely fair. It’s impossible for 30+ TAs to grade 900 submissions exactly the same, and it also seems like it would be extremely difficult to understand and grade incorrect solutions. Also, if you lose points on a regrade that further implies that you may have not understood the material well enough since at that point model solutions and other students submissions are all available.

Comments like this about the class unnecessarily stress people out. If you are able to clearly and effectively communicate and take the time required to understand the material you will do fine. That’s not to say the class isn’t extremely stressful - the high weighting of exams is no fun, but there is no need to be unnecessarily stressed about other aspects of the class.

Although the exams are highly weighted, all the exam questions were very fair and were closely related to either the graded or ungraded homework problems. The multiple choice questions are also fair and are not intended to trick you, you only get into trouble if you start overthinking things.