<p>I have received an A- in a programming course and it's simply unacceptable.</p>
<p>The course grade distribution goes like this:
30% Projects
30% Mid-Term
30% Final
10% Participation</p>
<p>I got an 88.75 on the Projects. The professor gave me a lot of 90's taking off points for flowcharts but he never specified exactly what was wrong with my flowcharts. The projects themselves worked fine.</p>
<p>I got a 98 on the Mid-Term.</p>
<p>I got an 83 on the Final. The Final was broken up into two parts- the written part and a project. I got a 43/50 on the written part. </p>
<p>On the project part of the exam I got a 30/50 which was boosted to a 40/50 by a 10 point extra credit assignment on the project.</p>
<p>The project worked perfectly and had no errors but he e-mailed me and told me he took off points because I did not use a For Next loop. The Final Exam Project description did not necessitate the use of a For Next loop. This is huge for me because if he had even given me five more points on the project, I would have gotten a 92.5 for the course which would be rounded up to a 93 (A).</p>
<p>I don't know who he thinks he is taking off that many points from my project and bringing down my GPA. He told us to follow the project rubric for the final exam project and now he's being a hypocrit and using this subjective grading method where he deducts points if he doesn't like how the coding looks even if it works fine.</p>
<p>You can’t really do a thing about it because on your college’s Grading system, there is probably a footnote that says soething like “a professor has the choice to change the grade blah blah blah”</p>
<p>You don’t know who he thinks he is? Seriously?</p>
<p>I don’t know who you think you are, lol. He’s your professor and can fail you if he wants. Yeah there’s a rubric he’s supposed to go off of, but at the end of the day he does have discretion.</p>
<p>If appealing an A- is the most of your problems, I envy you, dude.</p>
<p>I understand that arbitrary grading is frustrating, but you are not going to make any friends by pushing the issue. Professors do talk to each other - do you really want to be known as “that grade-grubbing student?” </p>
<p>
So things did even out. Maybe he unfairly took 10 points off because you used the wrong loop, but he also gave you an opportunity to earn 10 points in extra credit, which is not usually done at the college level either. Subtract both and you would be exactly where you are at right now.</p>
<p>By the way, how did you implement the loop? Code is often judged on cleanliness of the implementation and efficiency as well as correctness. A penalty for using a “while” loop instead of a “for” loop seems silly, but a penalty for copying-and-pasting a block of code 10 times instead of using a loop is easy to justify.</p>
<p>There’s no way he took off points JUST for not using a for loop. There has to be something else, like maybe it wasn’t the most efficient way to code that part.
Anyways, suck it up. Everyone gets an A- they didn’t deserve (like me, twice so far this year ;-; ) and there’s nothing you can do about it. Final grades are especially hard to appeal.</p>
<p>I feel that I shouldn’t have received an A- this year in one of my classes but due to one more absence than allowed… my grade went automatically from an A to an A- even though I had a 98% in the class. It’s just life.</p>
<p>Yeah, rymd, that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t the most efficient way to code the program but there is no requirement on his grading rubric for the program to use the most efficient code possible.</p>
<p>He took off all the points on the “Functionality, execution, error prevention, and debugging” portion of the rubric and that’s just completely unjust. </p>
<p>The program runs fine. He’s just mad I didn’t code it the way he wanted it coded. But he has no right to take off those points. According to his rubric, the project should be a 50/50 and a 60/50 with the extra credit points added. I’m really disgusted with this. I’m planning to go to law school and if I don’t get this grade adjusted to what it should be, it’ll mean almost a 0.01 difference in my UGPA.</p>
<p>Yes he did many unjust things. From the 90’s on my programming projects (taking off points for flowcharts and not explaining exactly why I lost those points… for someone who places such a large emphasis on the programming aspect of the class I really thought his grading would make a lot more sense but I guess that encapsulates him in a nutshell… makes no sense), to the ridiculous 83 on my final which brings me down to an A-.</p>
<p>I think he got offended that an English major was doing so well in his class when all of the Computer Science and Engineering majors were getting C’s on the easiest projects.</p>
<p>The more you write, the more I <em>really</em> want to see your code. Initially it sounded like your professor was splitting hairs, but now I am more inclined to believe that you submitted just plain bad code.</p>
<p>So for the Final Exam project that would mean that the grading would be:
Flowchart/Pseudocode- 10
Project Interface- 5
Naming Conventions- 10
Functionality, etc- 10
Comments- 10
Complete on Time- 5</p>
<p>There is no possible way I could have gotten a 30/50 if he followed the project grading rubric, unless he lied about following his own rubric when grading the final exam project.</p>
<p>There’s no requirement to use the most efficient code? So hard-coding an entire final project would be okay?
For something so small, it seems like you were really on the edge, and that it could’ve gone both ways. So sorry… it seems you got the short end of the stick with this professor. There will always be unfair professors and professors you will view as unfair. This is just one of them. Being an English major, I’d think you would understand.</p>
<p>and I can see efficiency falling under “execution”
you can try to appeal it, anyways. it won’t hurt, and this is just an elective.</p>
<p>“functionality” and “execution” can mean a lot of things. For example, code that runs in n! time when you should be able to do it in n^2 time is not really functional. Or maybe your loop-workaround is actually buggy.</p>
<p>Well the functionality, execution, etc portion of the rubric says:
“Project must work as intended with no logic or syntax errors. Project must include code that protects against user error and validates input.”</p>
<p>My project has absolutely no errors. It’s a radio button project that allows the user to select a certain day and select a certain location and then it outputs number values in a list box. All the number values for every single possible combination of selections are correct. </p>
<p>Given that description, I don’t see how he possibly could have taken points off there. Even if he gave me a 0 for that part, I would have had at least a 35/50, (that’s also assuming he gave me a 5/10 on the flowchart/pseudocode portion which he probably did because he doesn’t like me) which would have been bumped to a 45/50 with the extra credit which would have given me an 88 for the exam and a 93 average for the class.</p>
<p>It’s becoming very apparent that he did not follow the grading rubric for this Final Exam project like he said he did. He gave me an 83 because he was furious that I didn’t use a For Next loop.</p>