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

Was in a similar situation where I contested my final exam with a business law professor. I showed him how many points I needed to get my grade up, and needed to contest about 6 points. I only got 3 but he was cool enough to bump me up to an A since I had pretty valid points.

Just talk to them and see if they can let up on their rigid grading. If not, at least you tried.

 

you should try re directing his webpage. That will show him

 

I missed my final exam and the teacher said " it's ok, you got an A"

I'm still waiting patiently for my other online grade, so i can transfer to ut or hcc Coleman.

 

Oh the irony of this thread. I had an. 89 in biochemstry, bombed the first test and aced the **** out of the other 2 and the final. Hes one of the worst proffs and wouldnt even look ne in the eye. What pisses me off is all the work and hrs i put into it, i could have settled for a B a long time ago. I was one freaking question away on the final feom an A in the class and a 4.0 this semester.


Im just really down and depressed

 

if youre down and depressed over that then you going to have a hard time handling the rest of your life

 

LOL I took a class at HCC central once. I didn't submit a final paper and didn't even bother showing up for the final exam. Got an A. wtf....?

 

Keep your head up. I've cruised through my medical program the last couple of semesters and 2 of my teachers got really offended. She even told me i didnt deserve this. I had my other professors on her behalf even panic at me. She is just spilling drama everywhere. 75 and under is failing, 93 and up is an A. Short story I didn't even walked on my graduation. I'm the only one that has a job in my class. I have my other professor telling me to watch out cause they are harsh on minorities. Anyways, I still have a summer to go to and another ceremony to skip.

 

Many of my professors were the same way...probably good at their own research or whatever but a crappy overall class instructor.

 

Anyone here taken accounting at UH Bauer?

 

Yes. I had an econ professor who gave us an earlier version of his syllabus which he never updated. It clearly wrote in the syllabus that (For any quiz or exams you miss for a valid reason, the next respective quiz or exam you take will be worth double and the quiz/exam you missed will be scratched). I had to miss two tests for family reasons, and I thought it was ok to skip as long as I made up for it on my next quiz which I did. He gave me a final grade of C which was clearly wrong, so I brought it up to him and he dismissed it saying how it was in his syllabus and everything. My whole class showed him what he exactly wrote on the syllabus and he overturned it, effectively raising a good amount of people's grades (Whether they deserved it or not).

tl;dr? Yes I did make a claim and won.

 

Sounds like a really cool, non-defensive prof to me. He probably has billions of students and took the time to say he's looking into it and will definitely change the grade if something's amiss.

For what it's worth, the best way to approach a prof is to take responsibility from the start. "I know I didn't ace every single thing, but I think there might be a snafu with grading this one item, and it would make a big difference to me to make sure I receive the grade you truly think I deserve, versus what might be a glitch."

Students often come into a prof's office (or their email inbox) with all 2nd-person. "You didn't grade this properly... You changed the emphasis on the later material... You didn't follow the syllabus." Start with first-person, understand that they and they alone determine the grade, and see if they'll kindly double-check a couple of things for you. That's your best chance at getting results.

Speaking as someone who graduated with honors, just focus on learning as much as you can. Seriously, nobody ever notices you have some latin crap next to your degree.

Happy you seem to love the actual school stuff though, aside from grade headaches. Good luck.

 

I had a grade changed once. My final grade was a like a 79.1 in an Organizational Behavior class. I went back and forth over email begging the professor for a B. He finally gave in and gave me a B. I followed that up with some BS thank you email about how I was really grateful, it was a lesson learned blah blah…

In hindsight, I didn’t deserve *****. And that was probably one of the two most important classes I took while in school. I owed that professor more than a measly thank you for the grade… College students, smh

 

College...seems like a life time ago LOL.

My advice -- if you dont plan to take another course from the professor again, go over his head and talk to a dean.

 

I had a class once where 850 combined points from the tests/quizzes/etc meant an A in the class. At the end of the semester, I ended up with 849. Went and talked to the prof during office hours, he agreed to credit me the needed point based on good attendance during the semester.

 

Don't even consider going over the professor's head an option. Even though it technically is, there's little chance of that being effective. Don't blatantly kiss ass but act as if this is some gift from him even it is the grade you deserved all along.

 

I had a grade change once ... received a B should have gotten an A ... email prof over summer ... and he replied that he made a mistake.

 

Good you were able to get it raised. If I do make a legitimate mistake on grading, I pretty much make sure I can get the grade changed as soon as possible, and notify the student on my own when I get the paperwork in and when the grade change appears.

If all the grade determining steps were correct, though, I don't change my mind. Because that seems unfair to me; just change your mind because someone really wants the grade badly and comes up to you and tells you that? Apparently, from a lot of your stories, it does work sometimes, which explains why so many students try it, despite being warned from the first day of class that I don't do that. I've decided the fairest way is to just have a system, stick to it, and report the grades decided on by the final averages. I used to bump up the "close" ones and find some place at which to cut off the numbers, but then the next people down the list would get mad. For example, I used to bump up the 89's, but had one girl with an 88 who did not get bumped up, and she stayed mad at me for quite a while. Since she did not earn a 90 on her own, I don't know how she justifies taking it so personally. So no matter where you cut it off somebody is not going to be happy. I cut it off now at rounding to the nearest whole number (89.5 is an A, 89.4 is not). The other instructors in my department tell their students they have to have 90.00 and nothing below... which is even more frustrating, but at least they know it going in.

 

Protocol:

Talk to professor first. If he is not reacting in the way that you expected and you truly feel that you are treated unfairly (which in this case an A- is not the A that you truly believe that you deserve), then talk to the department chair. If that goes nowhere, you need to move up the chain which is the Dean. If that fails then you go to the academic ombudsman or grievance committee. Keep all documentation and write down as many conversations as you can recall.