[College] Anyone here ever successfully disputed a final grade?

Tell him you know all about the sex dungeon and you're going straight to the authorities unless he plays ball.

 

Ohh... I miss college.

 

I also had a very messy teacher, he couldnt grade anything all Year and he only made an Excel sheet for us to input our grades. Well i ket ever single assignment i was handed back, and came to see my final as being a 84. When he showed me his grade i had a 75, Wtf right? Well i pulled out every single paper and had a discussion with him and it turned out that he missed a test and a few quizes of mine. I got my B and it fell great. Just talk to him.

 

Instead of dispute, I would say discuss your final grade because you do not understand why the grade was so low. I'm afraid if you say dispute, you will put your professor on the defensive mode. We all have pride and testosterone and if that doesn't work. Unbutton your shirt and show some cleavage

 

Office hours? Better to talk to him in person, as long as you can keep your emotions in check.

 

Set up a meeting with him to see how your grade was calculated. If you are not happy with his approach during the semester (disorganized and flaky, as you put it, although I am not sure what you mean by "flaky"), you can let his department chair know about it. Also make sure you evaulated him on the professor/class evaluation.
If you goal is simply to get your grade changed, then you need to speak with him. Go by his office, call the department and leaves messages...eventually he will respond.

 

Weird. I've always had professors helping me out more than anything instead of misplacing or miscalculating my grades. One prof even emailed me and told me to write an extra credit paper because my final grade was a B+ and she thought I deserved an A based on all the papers I've written. Got it done in a few hours, sent it, got an A. The prof was this really hot blonde chick too... back then if you go to her ratemyprof page, she's real popular with the male students.

 

I know it matters, but I found this part to be somewhat humorous. I wish you luck in your endeavor to right the obviously catastrophic malfeasance. Let's hope no lives are lost in the process.

 

I once disputed a grade at TAMU. The teacher regraded the final and said I scored higher in once place the second time around (sweet), but lower in another section (cahhhhmon bro). I never escalated to the school, just with her, in the end I just didn't want to deal with the hassle. Grading is so subjective anyways, if you're teetering for a letter you should get the damn grade.

 

the only thing i dont like about school is the attendance based grades like quizes. i really think that detracts from a students ability to get graded based on their knowledge of the subject, but i guess you have to jump through whatever hoops they give you.

 

I got one changed once when it turned out that I had submitted a paper to the TA's drop box in time but he did not check the box again that day. (lazy TAs) That was easy enough to prove by contacting the instructor, though it did create an unnecessarily ugly scene with my parents at home when grades came out (this was before everything was put online early).

Had some others I wondered about, but they were upper-level courses that seemed to be graded on a curve at the professor's discretion. There was, sadly, no real way to know what grade you should have had or prove anything; they were never very clear about where grades were going to come from. Makes you think, "if I were teaching, I could do better than that..."

...so now I'm on the other side of the grade disputes. If I have one that's near the borderline and doesn't make it over the line, I always go through and double check to make sure I haven't made a mistake anywhere. Still, some people aren't happy. When I started teaching where I do now, I made a promise to the students and myself (which is more in accordance with the way the rest of the department works) that I was no longer going to curve up borderline grades; the average would be rounded to the nearest whole number and that was that. So it is; they know it from the beginning. May seem unfair but actually it's the fairest thing I can do.

 

Interesting point. I don't think college should be graded on attendance necessarily, as the students are grown-ups and can decide when to come to class. At the same time, I do give quizzes, though only on a certain day of the week; people know when they will and won't have one. It definitely helps people get their behinds to class; even the average of the quizzes is only 5% of their grade, so at least that minimizes the penalty on those who choose not to. In almost all cases, a student who misses class does worse on the next exam, particularly the section of the exam that covers whatever they weren't there for. While some people are capable of learning it on their own, it seems to be a very small percentage in the classes I teach. I try to tell them that the main value of the quizzes is as practice for the exams. I can understand if you really do know the material and it's a waste of your time to attend, though.

 

Well done. Fight the good fight. Carry on.

 

Cleverly disguised "I'm a college student married to a college teacher / librarian" thread. Baller!