<p>Hey, does anyone know, if I plan on switching majors, if there is a way to get a class removed from my transcript? I really didn't do well in it and it has nothing to do with my new major interest..I mean I don't mind my overall GPA being low, that can be remedied, but I just don't want to either retake it or have it just sitting there...can people do withdrawals or petitions after the course has ended?</p>
<p>It's such a dumb class to have done bad in, we've all got complaints since a majority have Cs or under out of a class of 200, because he changed his grading scales from past years. I think we just have to go to the head of the department, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p>i never heard of such things, so my guess is no. i highly doubt a 200 student class have majority of Cs and under.</p>
<p>well, at the very least out of the ten people I’ve talked to, one of us has a B, the rest have Cs and under. The TA told me she received tons of emails, and when he sent us all an email regarding a change in the scale he said ‘there were 10 As and 23 Bs’. He raised it so a few more people were pushed over the C-range, but the median is still a C (we can see the grades on this other website he uses.) </p>
<p>I mean, it’s not like I can’t come back from it, but I know a lot of other schools have grade grievance forms, I just haven’t seen anything on it at Cornell.</p>
<p>What exactly is your complaint? The professor can curve to whatever he wants.</p>
<p>wow which class is this?
should try to avoid it</p>
<p>but i agree with other posters that there’s probably no way of dropping it from your transcript</p>
<p>It’s no problem, it’s not like the major I’m switching to has anything to do with the class, so if anyone ever brings it up it’s defendable. </p>
<p>Visual Communications is the class, which is RIDICulous, because most COMM courses are piece of cake easy, like my other two were. I was going to double in COMM and Bio&Society, but now I’m just switching since that class is supposed to be a basic requirement for COMM and it’s an intro level course, so there’s no reason for that kind of grade.</p>
<p>In past years, the medians were B+, A-, A-. Why he decided now would be a good time to kick everyone makes no sense to me. </p>
<p>My actual complaint was with the grading scale used for the class - while it made sense throughout the course, believe me I was working on a B+ level the whole time, never got a failing grade on anything, just missed 2/24 quizzes.</p>
<p>The real problem came on the final exam which was 805 out of the 2100 total points. Not to mention, even though the class overall was decently subjective (no one would ever actually get a correct, definite answer out of him on a lot of essays and questions) the final itself was extremely subjective. We all left thinking we did well on it, and most of us ended up getting only 450 points or lower. Now at least six of my friends and me can’t count it for the major because we all have C- or below and those who got C/C+ are complaining because it’s ruining their GPAs. </p>
<p>Haha, sorry rant over. At this point I don’t care because I was in the process of switching anyway, but if anything can be done it’d be nice to get that figured out.</p>
<p>^I feel you.
It’s like a music class I took this semester…
The teacher’s supposed to be really easy (4.8 for easiness on ratemyprof) and I did well on all the tests/homeworks (As).</p>
<p>Somehow I ended up with a B-.
I emailed him a while ago asking him to provide me with a grade breakdown but he hasn’t replied yet.</p>
<p>I know what you mean too…I got all A’s/A+'s last semester, but somehow managed to get a B in Econ3140 which happens to be in my major…*** not to mention the professor also got a 4.8 on easiness. I don’t know how to explain it when my major gpa happens to be .8 lower than my overall gpa haha.</p>
<p>the lowest median grade is C+ and that was for two classes, one arond 25 students and the other 100.</p>
<p>also, grades by their absoluteness dont matter too much. getting a A- in a B+ median class isnt as good as a B+ in a C+ median class, but A- = 3.7 and B+ = 3.3</p>
<p>that is really miserable to have such a grading scale, since there’s probably other students who actually wanted to stay in Comm but ended up with similar scores. :(</p>
<p>I guess the presence of median scores on transcripts can be some consolation for you, since you’re switching anyway.</p>
<p>there are always those tough professors…dont you guys show median grades though on ur transcripts?</p>
<p>who’s the prof water? i’m also an incoming comm major and i have no idea what to take…needless to say i need really fluffy<em>easy/lots of As given out</em> comm courses for fall 2010 because i also plan to fight my way into orgo lecture, cell bio, and linear alg (i want to do premed/pregrad for bio and minor in math)</p>
<p>i sent you a pm with some more Qs b/c i don’t want to cannibalize your thread.</p>
<p>The Professor is Scherer, Visual is a spring only class and a basic requirement for everyone COMM. Yeah, melon, I replied to your PM, hope I helped.</p>
<p>@faustarp: it probably ended up being so that a ton of kids got flat out Cs and C+s, so all of them will still be able to count it in the major, even if they still want a better grade. At this point, I’d be happy with a C, but somehow I don’t think he’s changing the grading scale. He even had the nerve, after I asked him what I could do to either improve it or if there was anyone I could speak with, to post an automatic-response email ‘Out of office for the next couple weeks’ and didn’t answer me. That was FIFTEEN MINUTES after he had last replied. </p>
<p>He’s ridiculous, and I even thought he was a nice guy and a decent professor throughout the class.</p>
<p>Now the main issue I have is working with my advisor to either get a different requirement to cover it, change to a COMM minor, and then tell my parents…(they didn’t want me doing anything ‘bio’ related because my science courses at my community college were my worst grades/they don’t think I can handle it.)</p>
<p>Needless to say, Bio&Society is NOT the same stuff a Bio major needs to do and I’m not pre-med, just pre-health, so it’s not like I’ll be strangling myself with Orgo and Physics…</p>
<p>ugh this is so annoying to hear about haha. I’m a fashion design major but I was considering going into the art or editorial side of the fashion magazine industry, and I wanted to take some COMM classes, Visual Comm was like the first on my list! </p>
<p>blah we don’t even have a Magazine Writing class anymore, and now Visual Comm is supposed to be horrible?</p>
<p>I was on DUST looking at course evaluations…
It says the Spring 2010 COMM1300 had 84 As, 49 Bs, and only 1 C?</p>
<p>This discussion is about Comm 3140 not Comm 1300.</p>
<p>I was reading too fast–whoops that’s econ. </p>
<p>Maybe department chair discussed with prof and changed grades. Maybe original grades were input incorrectly. After all, what department would want to lose so many students?</p>
<p>Who knows? But to give out 75% A’s is a joke.</p>
<p>Norcal Guy-</p>
<p>I agree with you but I wonder about the accuracy of the info. </p>
<p>Many places where info could be wrong. DUST report could be wrong. Reporting of DUST report could be wrong. Info from OP could be wrong. Much reporting of grade information is done by hand, not automatically, so there is lots of room for error. In my opinion, CU needs to spend some serious time and money updating their information systems.</p>
<p>Well I know for a fact that’s not right, because I know about twenty people in the class, none of whom have As. The highest person has a B+, some people have a B, the rest of us all have C and lower (so that can’t be correct for the DUST website, if it really does say only one person has a C, that makes no sense.) </p>
<p>And each day more people from the class are telling me ‘yeah! my visual grade was SO bad!’</p>
<p>But the real concern is for those of us who were given Cs and lower. Oh, and I also calculated my grade by a normal averaging system. Even if I were to have failed the final, I’d have a C+, not a D-. It’s ridiculous, the only reason I have that is because of his made-up scale. That’s the real issue we’re going to be emailing the COMM dept. head about.</p>
<p><strong>EDIT:</strong></p>
<p>I just checked out the DUST website. Those evaluations were given to us in late April, mostly to grade the TAs and class overall on performance and quality and what not. So at that time, I had a B in the course (which is what I put down on the evaluation). That’s why those grades are so skewed to what they really are - Cornell doesn’t base those grades on final grades because we all get those surveys well before our final exams, and they’re due in before that too, so no student could be precise about their final grade.</p>
<p>So basically, DUST = fail.</p>