<p>If in the syllabus it is clearly stated that in order to get an A- in the class, the students needs to have 90+, is it reasonable to expect an A- for an 89.45 grade?</p>
<p>how about for 88.5?</p>
<p>no, it says A- is >90, so why would less than 90 be an A-?</p>
<p>Depends. If the syllabus says 90+ is an A, then no, since your grade would round to an 89 with 2 sig figs. If the syllabus says 89.5+ is an A, then your score rounds to 89.5 with the correct sig figs, so you have an A. If the syllabus says 89.50+ is an A, then no.</p>
<p>what can I do to convince the prof. to give me an A- instead of a B+?</p>
<p>Offer sexual favors?</p>
<p>But in all honesty, grade grubbing is a deplorable tactic. You should’ve gotten those extra .55 percentage points. At this point all you can do is beg and hope. And hate yourself for being such a weenie.</p>
<p>Earn it OP</p>
<p>possibly you can get an a- with a 89.50 or above bc that rounds up unless ur teacher is really nitty (and some teachers are).</p>
<p>NO. One of my friends told me she emailed a prof to ask for a grade bump in a situation similar to yours and the prof told her no way. It seemed like a pretty b!tch move on my friend’s part. Grade grubbing is among the lowest of the low.</p>
<p>It’s pretty arrogant when people say that the threshold for an A should be just below the grade they got. It’s not less arrogant because you were closer to an A than most.</p>
<p>This is one of those things that is up to the professor–some round, some truncate. This semester in my materials science class (4 credit hours), I ended up with an 89.96. Not only was rounding the difference between a B and an A, but that prof also doesn’t believe in +/-, so that .04 was the difference between a 3.0 and a 4.0 in a 4 hour class. Luckily, he was one of the nicest teachers I’ve had and said that of course he’d round it, especially since he knew how much effort I put into the class.
On the other hand, larger intro classes like chem/physics/bio are much less likely to be lenient.</p>
<p>90 is an A-</p>
<p>so, is 89.45 greater than or equal to 90?</p>
<p>No, it is not.</p>
<p>If you want a better grade, study harder.</p>
<p>At my college, it’s still a B+. Sorry, better luck next time. ^_^</p>
<p>It’s not reasonable to expect it, but if you’re that close, put a ton of effort into the class, have a good relationship with your professor (see karabee’s example) and really think that asking will get you the extra .55, I see no problem in asking or offering to do something extra to bring it up. Don’t ask just for the the hell of it - only if you have really made a good impression on the professor and put a ton of effort into the class and really expect that doing so will bring up your grade.</p>
<p>Usually profs have a 10 percent participation grade or something to offer them lee-way in giving you the grade they think you earned, whether a bit higher or a bit lower than what you think it is.</p>
<p>If a professor doesn’t have this and has to go purely by the numbers (although tests and papers are graded subjectively at times anyway) – then he or she will have a tough time justifying giving you imaginary points. Of course, if they are laid back they will just give you the A.</p>
<p>Nope. I had that happen this semester (2 pts away), but I say be proud of what you get, as long as you worked hard for it.</p>
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<p>Well, if we’re being so literal, if an A- is > or = 90 and a B+ is < or = 89 . . . what do you call a grade, x, if 90>x>89?</p>
<p>Who said B+ was < or = 89?</p>
<p>
A common example . . . obviously the range of a B+ is bounded below by some irrelevant number.</p>
<p>The official grading scale in high schools in my state defines an “A” to be from 93 to 100 and a “B” to be from 85 to 92, with no pluses or minuses. The fact remains that a grade, x, 93 < or = x < or = 92 is neither an “A” or a “B.” </p>
<p>This makes grading arbitrary and inherently unfair; some instructors will truncate and some will round according to various rounding schemes . . . rarely will they tell you their method in a syllabus or in class, and rarely will one think to ask, assuming he or she will not be that person.</p>
<p>Actually, every proffessor and every class I’ve taken has laid out their exact grading scale on the syllabus, which is almost always 90> is at least an A-, with the only thing of interest being whether they give out A+'s or not.</p>
<p>Yes, some round and some don’t, but I’d assume no. Rounding/ truncating down never happens - doing that, or not laying out the grading system on the syllabus is easy grounds for debating the grade or going over the prof’s head.</p>
<p>"not laying out the grading system on the syllabus is easy grounds for debating the grade or going over the prof’s head. "</p>
<p>Plenty of professors in my larger lectures designated grade cutoff points by ordering students based on grade point totals and identifying statistically significant gaps in the point totals. This is not debatable or unreasonable, even though the cutoffs could therefore not be mentioned in the syllabus (not even as a percentile of the class). Arguably, it’s much more fair. Not surprisingly, I’ve found this practice is most common in actuarial science/stats/math courses, where the professors are numbers-oriented.</p>
<p>At least my school (admittedly a large state u), an 89.45 is a B if the cutoff for AB is 90. I think there’s a strong argument for 89.5 being an AB if 90 is cutoff and for 89.95 being an AB if 90.0 is cutoff, but these are still the professor’s decisions.</p>