Graded Unfairly, what should I do?

baktrax
Sat, 20 Jun 2015 22:01:46 +0000

Assuming your midterm and final grade were each worth 40%, then I calculated your final grade as 900.4 + 870.4 + 90*0.2 = 88.8. If your professor doesn’t use pluses and minuses, then that’s a B. If your professor does uses pluses and minuses, than that might be a B+, but it depends on the grading scale. I don’t see why you think you were graded unfairly. You earned a B, so you got a B.

Your professor was very nice in giving students who did better on the final (including you) a chance to do well in the course. You did worse on the final than you did on the midterm so you didn’t get that benefit. You still did very well in the class, but other students who really worked hard to get an A on the final did get that benefit. If you had gotten an A on the final, you would have gotten an A in the course. But you didn’t. That’s life. Other students may have done poorly on the midterm, but they clearly improved significantly if they got an A on the final. They proved they understood the material, and the professor was willing to reward that effort by giving their final more weight. But they STILL needed to get an A on the final. It’s not like they could get a B on the final and an A in the course just because they worked hard (which is essentially what you are asking for). They had to do the same work that you did, but other students may have been able to get an A on the final, while you didn’t.

She was giving students a second chance. It may seem like it invalidated how hard you worked on the midterm, but really, your work wasn’t wasted at all. Students who failed the midterm knew their entire grade was weighing on one final exam. So some students who got an A on the final clearly worked hard to make that test save their grade. Since you did well on the midterm, you didn’t have the same pressure when taking the final exam to pass the course. However, you didn’t really expect to get a B on the final and still get an A in the course, did you? You would have had to do significantly better on the midterm and research paper to make that happen.