What can I do about an extremely unfair grade?

fronk36
Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:21:54 +0000

My statistics class this semester was the traditional ‘3 tests and a final’ format. The professor was very old, barely speaks English, was too smart for the material, and made even the most simple things extremely confusing. Basically, we were forced to teach ourselves, and the tests being extremely difficult and confusing didn’t help matters.

Alright, back to the point of this post. I took my final for the class this morning, and it looks like I’ll be finishing the class with (hopefully not) a D. Despite studying for days in advance, i feel like I’ll be lucky to pass get a C. Frustrated, I decided to look up other professors available for the same course on rate my professor. To no surprise, the few other professors out there seemed just as bad. But, to my amazement, I read comment after comment about a Stats teacher that was allowing students to take quizzes and tests open book and open notes.

In my class, we were lucky if we were given a formula sheet for a test. But this other teachers students don’t have to study, memorize formulas, or actually learn anything. He pretty much hands As out for showing up. I asked some of my friends who have taken the class with him , and they all confirmed that it was true. They said that class is almost always 30 minutes long too (ours were an hour and a half, no exceptions).

How is this fair to me, or my classmates? I worked my ass off all semester to end up with a D and a huge blow to my GPA. And its not even uncommon. Our professor has stated numerous times that at least half his students fail, and blames us for it. Meanwhile, other kids get open book tests and quizzes!

What can I do about this? I really want to contact a university counselor or dean or something, but have no idea where to start. Any advise on what I should do next would be amazing.

Also: Is it wrong of me to feel like I deserve some type of boost to my grade because of this? I am seriously considering figuring out who to talk to in order to accomplish this, or even informing others who have suffered from this as well. The problem is not just that other students are getting As for doing nothing. The bigger issue is that the other professors who teach this course are known to explain nothing to students and then give out extremely difficult tests. Meanwhile, my school allows one professor to give out As while teaching nothing, which only hurts students in the long run.