<p>I was an English major. I remember the professor who gave me my first B+ on a paper in the subject. I went to see him and asked what I could have done differently. His response, "It’s hard to say. " [I am quoting him verbatim. It was over 30 years ago, but it is burned into memory! 
] I asked to see examples of A papers. His response, “That wouldn’t be fair.”</p>
<p>After asking a few more such questions, I left. I knew why I got that grade–which was not a bad grade at my school at that time, it was just that I was accustomed to receiving one of the very few As–and it had nothing to do with my work. It had everything to do with being intellectually threatening for a guy in his first job, and with skipping class occasionally and not sucking up to him.</p>
<p>The only sure fire method of getting good grades in subjective areas is the following, although I personally never did it:</p>
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<p>When I was a grad student at the U of C, it was stunning to see the degree to which favoritism and sexism played into grading. The only thing we did that was graded blind was the master’s exam. Imagine the consternation when MAT candidates and females who did not assiduously flirt with the professors and had the nerve to talk in class and other outcasts who routinely were given the dreaded B+ (meaning don’t let into the PhD program) received the top grades and some of the favored boys received Bs!</p>