Midterm 2 Logistics
This post contains important information about Midterm 2.
Date, Time, and Location
The exam is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9th from 1-3PM in 1690 BBB. Please arrive a few minutes early so that we can start on time.
Students with SSD accommodations will start at 1PM and finish according to their accommodations (e.g. 4PM with 150% accommodations).
Content and Format
Midterm 2 is not cumulative. Midterm 2 will contain content from:
- Chapters 5-8 of the course notes
- Lecture 6’s matrix material and Lectures 7-10
- Homeworks 5-8
- Labs 6-9
That said, the ideas above build upon ideas from before Midterm 2 (e.g. linear independence, span, etc.).
The first lecture after Midterm 2 starts Chapter 9, so eigenvalues, eigenvectors, diagonalization, and later material are not Midterm 2 content.
The exam will be a 120 minute, on-paper, closed-notes exam, with the exception of two double-sided 8.5x11” notes sheets that you handwrite yourself (no typing, no writing on an iPad and printing, no screenshotting lecture slides, etc.). Feel free to bring your Midterm 1 notes sheet as one of your two sheets, if you’d like. We will be checking notes sheets to ensure compliance with this policy. Other than that, you may not refer to any resources or technology during the exam (no phones, no smart watches, no computers, and no calculators).
The exam will contain a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and long form proofs/derivations. You will not be asked to write code on the exam. The format of the exam will be similar to past exams.
Like other College of Engineering exams, we will adhere to the College of Engineering Honor Code. You should take the exam entirely on your own, without the assistance of any other human or technology. After the exam, you should not discuss the exam with anyone who hasn’t taken it yet. Your cooperation in upholding the integrity of the exam is both very important and very much appreciated.
During the exam, we will have a strict no-questions policy. This makes it so that all students have the exact same information about the exam problems, and it avoids disruptions of students climbing over others during the exam to get to the hallway to ask us a question. If an exam problem is unclear or you’re not sure how to proceed, make your best educated guess, and feel free to write on the exam itself any assumptions you made in solving the problem.
Preparation
You’ll want to make sure you have a solid grasp of:
- Everything in the course notes from Chapters 5-8, including all activities
- The homework and lab problems listed above
- The posted homework and lab solutions linked from the homepage
The Resources tab contains past Midterm 2 exams. Prioritize the “real” Midterm 2’s from Winter 2026 and Fall 2025 over the mock Midterm 2. The Problems by Topic section indexes past exam problems by the corresponding course notes chapter.
Note that past Final Exams have relevant content as well, since the Final Exam is cumulative. In addition to these past exams, the Resources tab contains links to other sources of practice problems from other courses I’ve taught and other courses online. It also indexes all past exam problems by topic.
A few other ways to prepare:
- Continue to make office hours appointments to ask questions!
- Post on Slack! If any of the solutions to past homeworks, labs, or exams are unclear, let us know on Slack. We can update them if need be.
Best of luck studying!