Anyone ever filed a grade grievance for a college course?

[Drazzil]

There are a number of questions that need to be answered:

1. Is this professor tenured? If so, drop the grievance right now. Even if it comes out in your favor, IE The dean TELLS the instructor he/she was wrong, it is still totally in the professors ball court as to whether to do something about it or not.

2. Do you have this professor next quarter? If yes, then drop the issue, lest next quarter you have a bullseye painted on your forehead.

3. Will it matter in the long scheme of things? If no, drop it.

4. Do you have physical copies of your work in which you can prove that you did well in certain assignments? If yes, approach the professor privately, professors do not like having their math screw ups made public. But since you already appealed you will need as much physical evidence as you can get.

[mithrilG60]

Originally Posted by Goldie

But the reason I feel I was graded improperly is because I compared my work with other students who had nearly identical answers and they would lose one point, or none, where I lost all credit for the answer.

On one assignment, he deducted points because he thought I typed the answers to the questions sloppily. It just feels like he is being petty about my grading, and I don't really feel like I should stand for it. It just pisses me off.

As others have mentioned, in a subjective grading scenario you don't have much of a chance arguing against him. You may compare your answers to your collegues and think they're basically identical but the differences may be significant to the prof and that's why the grading was so low.

Originally Posted by Goldie

Do I deserve an A in that class, not really, but a solid B is what I expected to get. I just averaged all of the average grades for the assignments and it came to a 73% which is a D. The average grade is a D! He grades too hard, and his tests are above our knowledge level. This is an ASL class, so we are learning this language, and he grades like we already know it.

Your best hope for a grade improvement lies here, if the prof has graded the entire class more harshly than the standard bell curve for the course would indicate the department may choose to adjust everyone's marks to reflect the standard bell. That's still very unlikely since everyone in education knows that you occasionally get a class that under-performs compared to the average. You would probably need to involve a majority of you classmates in the effort and then prove to the administration that attributing the grades to a "dumb" class is invalid. In your case, given that your grade was actually above the class average, I can't see an individual grievance working in your favour.

It's most likely that the prof is just a hard marker, especially if the class average is low. I had several profs like that in uni, they just marked hard and everyone always got lower marks in those courses than they did in the rest of their programs. One of those profs was famous for never once having given an A in his 20 yrs of tenure. It's not that uncommon, everyone just knew that a C or a B in that class was just as amazing an accomplishment as an A+ in most other courses.

It may seem very important/aggravating right now but frankly one grade is irrelevant to your future prospects. Grade schools really only give significant weight to the last 2 years of your undergrad and almost never consider individual courses, especially if the grade is an anomaly. Employers typically care even less about individual grades or even GPA's especially for entry level positions. Your work ethic, how you present yourself and how to fit in with the corporate culture are FAR more important.

[Da Klugs]

I got expelled my senior year because I got straight A's. (True Story)

[Goldie]

I contacted the prof who was going to facilitate the meeting and grade grievance for me, and said I wanted to hold off.

I wanted to take the opportunity to sit and speak with my prof first. I think giving him another chance face to face is the right thing to do.

I just got a little heated when I saw my grade.

[darkleeroy]

Originally Posted by Goldie

I contacted the prof who was going to facilitate the meeting and grade grievance for me, and said I wanted to hold off.

I wanted to take the opportunity to sit and speak with my prof first. I think giving him another chance face to face is the right thing to do.

I just got a little heated when I saw my grade.

That's a smart, remember, the difference between a 3.5 and a 3.6 GPA matters in only a handful of places; and even then gaining an great internship would do even better for you. Start networking now, while you're in college and the job search would be easier in the future.