When I went to Cal Tech (the one affiliated with JPL) many decades ago, all of the exams were open book, take-home tests. You would be allowed three hours to take the test, on the honour system. The reason it worked was that the test problems were so damn hard that most people would get through only half of them in three hours, and by that point we were damn well ready to quit! Also, for the freshman year all classes were graded pass/fail, which also took some pressure off. I wonder if they still do that?