<p>I am just graduated senior from the School of Informatics & Computing.</p>
<p>First, some background info, I494 and I495 is a combined year long class, it is a Capstone project class that spans two semesters. The goal of the class is to demonstrate the skills we have acquired for the past 4 years and create a final project. It is worth 6 credits or 2 classes.</p>
<p>My problem is that I was accepted into graduate school under the condition that I obtain a 3.3 gpa for my final semester.
I took on 6 classes in my final semester to finish prerequisite classes for graduate school, this includes capstone.
Grade wise I did very well and expected to do so on my Capstone project, however I received a C for the class and it put me under the gpa requirement for graduate school. This lowers my gpa for the semester to a 3.26.</p>
<p>I really feel that the grade I received was unfair, this is why:</p>
<p>this is why:
My team consists of three members including myself, we are all Asian.
At the beginning of the semester, we had initially planned to create an eCommerce website.
This was because most of what we learned in college was on css, html and python. We felt confidant that we could create a really nice capstone project.</p>
<p>Our professor flat out rejected this idea and told us it wouldn’t be advanced enough for Capstone.
He insisted that we do app development, creating a game or service.
We told him we had zero experiencing coding in c# or java, and really does not reflect on the skills we learned over the past four years. He does not agree and we end up changing our idea into an app game project.
We were set back a few weeks with our idea changes and were informed that we were one of the worst teams in the class, due to the setbacks.</p>
<p>Fast forward to the Capstone Fair, we were able to complete a vertical slice of our app, it was not fully complete but it was playable and on an Android phone. We had worked hard in learning to code in c# and were proud of what we had accomplished. I felt that despite our setbacks, we should have had a solid B for the class. At the fair I also realize there were several teams that had gone ahead with websites, and there were several teams that also did game app development and had not accomplished what we had. </p>
<p>When I asked one of the groups on the grade they received, they actually received a higher grade despite not even having a working prototype at the Fair. </p>
<p>This made me think about why was our team treated unfairly? We weren’t allowed to create a website despite other teams doing so, and we didn’t receive a similar grade to a team that was worse-off.
The grading of this year long project fell into several broad categories. There were no details on why we received such a low grade other than our professor’s opinion of what we deserved.</p>
<p>My question now is can I appeal this grade? I have already emailed this professor requesting a detailed explanation however I have had no response for the past 3 days. </p>
<p>I think you are approaching it incorrectly in asking the professor for an explanation without giving him/her a detailed explanation as to why you deserve a higher grade. Tell him everything you did and why you think that warrants a better grade. I also would not recommend you “compare” your project to others as the reason. I wouldn’t mention the whole “it’s not fair–they did a website” thing. I also would not mention the “your Asian” thing. Excuses won’t work. Focus on what you did do.</p>
<p>Send this email as a follow-up. If you don’t hear from the prof in a week, go to the next level as mentioned in the above link.</p>
<p>My D is an SOIC grad. I don’t recall if there is more than one professor assigned to Capstone projects? I do recall a few “team” issues near the end of the project, but they did well. </p>