Can professors give higher letter grade than numbers add up to bcuz of hard work

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ponybreeder4

ponybreeder4

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So i have really been struggling in biochem and my professor kknows exactly how hard ive been working. so say my numbers add up to a C, can she give me a b if she wanted to, for the amount of effort i put in?
This happened to anyone?
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sure if the professor is nice haha

i got a B in a lab and I begged the professor for an A and he gave it to me =)
 
ponybreeder4 said:
So i have really been struggling in biochem and my professor kknows exactly how hard ive been working. so say my numbers add up to a C, can she give me a b if she wanted to, for the amount of effort i put in?
Click to expand...
Competent>Hard working

I wish more professors knew that.
 
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you would be leapfrogging students in the C+ through B- range who earned their grade. that would not be fair, so i cannot see any prof doing this.
 
redlight said:
you would be leapfrogging students in the C+ through B- range who earned their grade. that would not be fair, so i cannot see any prof doing this.
Click to expand...

true that!! :thumbup:
 
DrSno said:
Competent>Hard working

I wish more professors knew that.
Click to expand...
True, but it also happens this way:

Dislikes you>>competence

A professor targeted my papers and subtracted points subjectively on every paper. On the final, she gave me a grade, then went over about eight different problems and gave me a lower grade for all of them. The old grade is clearly crossed out. Coincidence? Hell no. It was just enough to lower my grade by one. I finally got fed up and took action. Only then she left her denial stage and faced what I really knew and could do.

I don't know how often this happens, but some professors have issues. Even worse, some TAs have competitive insecurities: one TA took off like 20% of my grade from a report. I talked to the teacher and just after reading that part once, he gave all of the points back without question and was very uneasy as to why that had happened. I didn't even ask why and left it at that...

So chances are that often your grade is subjective and in borderline cases a humane discussion may be apropos. It is unfortunate, but many teachers grade you subjectively. I have had also cases where I got points off for certain things at the beginning of the course, then as the teacher or the TA got to know who I was, I began noticing that many of my mistakes (very similar ones) were dismissed and I lost no points. In this case it is not too bad since they likely knew that my understanding of the material is very good. This is especially true for top schools. At a CC they don't give a one damn!

So everything can affect your grade: your looks, what you wear, how you behave, how articulate you are, etc. When you are stopped out of the blue as you are walking out of the class and are told how you "look" like a doctor, etc, you can be pretty sure that there is a positive bias. On the other hand, if the teacher dismisses your point by bringing up an unrelated hypothesis, you know you're in deep ****.
 
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redlight said:
you would be leapfrogging students in the C+ through B- range who earned their grade. that would not be fair, so i cannot see any prof doing this.
Click to expand...

Yes, happens often unfortunately.
 
Professors very often bump you up to the next grade if you are close to it (say you have a 79.2%) if they know you've been working hard, coming to office hours, etc.

It sounds like it's possible they can bump you up a full grade level, but I do think that's starting to get rather little unfair and is probably unlikely. Your best bet is to try and raise your grade to the upper 70's (if you're in the 70's), and I think you'll have a fair shot at being bumped up to a B-, but only if your professor does that sort of thing in the first place.
 
Professors can give you a higher grade than what you earned, if they feel like it. Most of them do not, though, but there are exceptions.

They shouldn't do it, though, in my opinion, If even with putting a huge effort into your studies, coming to office hours, etc, you still are able to only earn a C, then this is the grade you deserve. Despite all the hard work, you obviously don't have a good grasp of material. You can't expect to be rewarded just because you tried hard, if despite all the efforts you weren't successful. For example, I can take a music class and work my butt off, but it should not negate the fact that I am tone-deaf and thus I should not get a higher grade than I am able to earn.
 
So other students are not hardworking at all and they don't deserve a better grade? I don't think giving out grade due to hardworking is fair.
You have to work smart but not work hard...
 
longhorn09 said:
So other students are not hardworking at all and they don't deserve a better grade? I don't think giving out grade due to hardworking is fair.
You have to work smart but not work hard...
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
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C -> B is a big change

But I had a prof who really liked me and this other girl, and we were just below the curve and stuck with A-'s. So she lowered the curve a point or two and that moved us both to A's, along with at least one other student that I knew she didn't care one way or the other about.

So this doesn't single one person out and move them way above, but it's a slightly more objective way that a prof can move your grade up if they like you.
 
I spent a semester as an undergrad Math lecturer. The short answer to your question is yes, a prof. can give you a higher grade than the points. Ultimately, the professor or lecturer's job is teach the material and assign a grade based on how well you picked it up. Creating a system of weighted grades is just a means to do that. If I create the system; it's my prerogative to alter it. Further, if it were feasible and fair to do so, I wouldn't have to use numbers or grades at all. If it could be done, one could do all oral exams or one huge written paper (the math department probably wouldn't be too keen on that - math classes lend themselves to number grading).

The issue though, is fairness. I can't see a situation in which I'd bump a C to a B for hard work. That hard work bump, in my mind, is for someone who was there, doing the work, maybe already failed the class once, majoring in something else and don't really need this math except that it's a distro requirement, etc. Maybe they end up with a 71%, needing a 73%. Those are the kinds of cases where I might be willing to bump a student up, to get them on with their lives.

But I would hope, for fairness's sake, that a bump of a C to a B wouldn't happen. All one's students should be doing hard work. That's a weak reason to bump a grade up, and more importantly, not fair to those that did hard and effective work.
 
Stixman28 said:
C -> B is a big change

But I had a prof who really liked me and this other girl, and we were just below the curve and stuck with A-'s. So she lowered the curve a point or two and that moved us both to A's, along with at least one other student that I knew she didn't care one way or the other about.

So this doesn't single one person out and move them way above, but it's a slightly more objective way that a prof can move your grade up if they like you.
Click to expand...

agreed. I've had teachers that'll take hard work into consideration... but they'd never bump you an entire letter grade. I ended up with an 88.5 in evolution and my teacher knew how hard I worked. He gave me a B+ instead of a B, but bumping me to an A would have been unfair to everyone that actually earned an A.
 
I recently took a class where the grade was curved. The TA and professor explained that if someone was close to the cutoff, they could be bumped up based on the TA's impression of how hard they had worked, etc. Once they were bumped up, everyone else with that score or higher was bumped up as well. So there was some subjectivity, but it didn't lead to students getting higher grades than others with the same scores.

The bump would be a whole letter grade, since that's all my undergrad had.
 
when I was a TA, I may have been very lenient to the gir...i mean people that i liked/found attractive when grading :)
 
witness23 said:
when I was a TA, I may have been very lenient to the gir...i mean people that i liked/found attractive when grading :)
Click to expand...

See, if anything, I was the opposite, because I wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Just one more reason to wear that hoodie to class, ladies. :)
 
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I knew a professor who never gave anyone less that a C-. It was a hard class, and the A-Cs were given out fairly. But he refused to fail anyone because "we were paying too much money to receive an F"
 
Many people in society begin rewarding effort early on in school. Which is fine, children should be rewarded for their effort. The problem is that some kids grow up to be adults that think effort is all that is required from them in academia. Unfortunately, that is not the case in the adult world. The students earning A's also put in effort and hard work, but they also mastered the material. I don't want an engineer who tried to build a safe structure. I want a safe structure. I don't want a chemist who tried to develop a new form of birth control. I want a birth control pill that works. That list could go on forever. . .

Can a professor raise your grade? Yes, it happens all the time. I had an organic chemistry professor give out points to students for "creativity" on their exams. Which is ridiculous because it just makes it harder for someone who did the problems correctly to get an A after the curve.
 
armybound said:
yes, your professor can assign about any grade they want.
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the only time anything like that happened was in my organic 2 class, in which he made the final exam really hard, but if you scored higher on the final than your average grade thus far, he'd give you that grade, up to a whole letter grade higher. I went from a B/B- to an A-.
 
ponybreeder4 said:
So i have really been struggling in biochem and my professor kknows exactly how hard ive been working. so say my numbers add up to a C, can she give me a b if she wanted to, for the amount of effort i put in?
This happened to anyone?
Click to expand...

No, I don't think this is likely going to happen, nor do I think it's fair. You get what you earn and your letter grade is supposed to be an objective measure of how well you did on the exams and problem sets. The only time when I see this happening is if you were at the borderline and your professor decided to give you a C+ instead of a C. A small "bump" like that would be more likely to happen. At my school, the exams are based on nothing but exams. The problem sets and class attendance are no supposed to count for anything, but if you turned in all of your problem sets and was present for (most) of your classes, the professor will bump your grade up to an A- if you had a B+.
 
You can not show up to a single test and the professor can give you an A if they are so inclined. They can pretty much do whatever they want and many professors will even say that they reserve the right to make any changes they feel necessary (although most of the time it is in your favor).
 
AlbaMD said:
If even with putting a huge effort into your studies, coming to office hours, etc, you still are able to only earn a C, then this is the grade you deserve.
Click to expand...
Agreed. "A for Effort" should end in elementary school.
 
hey guys, new to this site. I prepared a letter im planning to send to my professor. I was wondering if you had any comments on it (btw its a sincere letter, its not BS):

Dear Professor
I know that it is probably too late to ask this, and I probably don’t deserve this, but I would like to talk to you about the grade that I have received. I would not normally ask this but I am desperate. The reason for my poor performance this semester is that I have been having a lot of trouble due to personal issues which has affected my performance in all of my courses. I know this does sound vague, laughable, and probably pitiful but it is true. I could discuss this further with you in if you need proof. The reason why I am asking you this is that since I switched my major to psychology last year I have had to catch up with courses and overload in these coming summer sessions. As the requirements say that I need to have a C as a minimum, I puts me in a dreadful situation, which I acknowledge is entirely my fault, but I would probably not be able to graduate as I would have one course which I would not be able to complete. I understand that you don’t owe me anything, but my position forces me to ask you if you could look over my grades and see if it is possible for me to merit a C grade.
 
Excelsius said:
True, but it also happens this way:

Dislikes you>>competence

A professor targeted my papers and subtracted points subjectively on every paper. On the final, she gave me a grade, then went over about eight different problems and gave me a lower grade for all of them. The old grade is clearly crossed out. Coincidence? Hell no. It was just enough to lower my grade by one. I finally got fed up and took action. Only then she left her denial stage and faced what I really knew and could do.

I don't know how often this happens, but some professors have issues. Even worse, some TAs have competitive insecurities: one TA took off like 20% of my grade from a report. I talked to the teacher and just after reading that part once, he gave all of the points back without question and was very uneasy as to why that had happened. I didn't even ask why and left it at that...

So chances are that often your grade is subjective and in borderline cases a humane discussion may be apropos. It is unfortunate, but many teachers grade you subjectively. I have had also cases where I got points off for certain things at the beginning of the course, then as the teacher or the TA got to know who I was, I began noticing that many of my mistakes (very similar ones) were dismissed and I lost no points. In this case it is not too bad since they likely knew that my understanding of the material is very good. This is especially true for top schools. At a CC they don't give a one damn!

So everything can affect your grade: your looks, what you wear, how you behave, how articulate you are, etc. When you are stopped out of the blue as you are walking out of the class and are told how you "look" like a doctor, etc, you can be pretty sure that there is a positive bias. On the other hand, if the teacher dismisses your point by bringing up an unrelated hypothesis, you know you're in deep ****.
Click to expand...

So whenever you lose points on an assignment, the grader has a personal problem with you?

And people randomly stop you to tell you that you look like a doctor?
 
paleopsy said:
hey guys, new to this site. I prepared a letter im planning to send to my professor. I was wondering if you had any comments on it (btw its a sincere letter, its not BS):

Dear Professor
I know that it is probably too late to ask this, and I probably don’t deserve this, but I would like to talk to you about the grade that I have received. I would not normally ask this but I am desperate. The reason for my poor performance this semester is that I have been having a lot of trouble due to personal issues which has affected my performance in all of my courses. I know this does sound vague, laughable, and probably pitiful but it is true. I could discuss this further with you in if you need proof. The reason why I am asking you this is that since I switched my major to psychology last year I have had to catch up with courses and overload in these coming summer sessions. As the requirements say that I need to have a C as a minimum, I puts me in a dreadful situation, which I acknowledge is entirely my fault, but I would probably not be able to graduate as I would have one course which I would not be able to complete. I understand that you don’t owe me anything, but my position forces me to ask you if you could look over my grades and see if it is possible for me to merit a C grade.
Click to expand...

I would not put these bolded lines in there and try to make yourself sound professional when asking. You can try but the chances are he won't bump up the grade since he has heard these stories in the past (maybe even worse). It does not mean it is impossible to get the grade bump but it is highly unlikely.

Mt Kilimanjaro said:
So whenever you lose points on an assignment, the grader has a personal problem with you?

And people randomly stop you to tell you that you look like a doctor?
Click to expand...

Sorry to say this but that post is 3 years old.
 
ponybreeder4 said:
So i have really been struggling in biochem and my professor kknows exactly how hard ive been working. so say my numbers add up to a C, can she give me a b if she wanted to, for the amount of effort i put in?
This happened to anyone?
Click to expand...

Depends on the professor, but if and when it does happen it's usually when you are within a hair of the next grade up (<1% away).

I had a few classes where the professor set grade in where there were nearly natural breaks in the grade, (according to the calculated curve the A-B cut off should be 75, but no one scored between 70-73% so he moved the cutoff to 73%), and it was always on the generous side.
 
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