Evil Teacher... sigh

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Yeah. I have this very evil teacher. Now I know you are probably thinking that I am just mad because my grade is bad, or something dumb, but hear me out, and tell me if I am to blame.</p>

<p>I am talking about my french teacher. She gives these very hard assignments/quizzes/tests. Nothing to complain about, as I do pretty good on them. Here is the bugger: lets say you got a 101/100 on a test like I did. There was 5 points extra credit, and I got one point of it. Now, here is how she records it in grade book:</p>

<p>101 out of 105 "possible points" = 96.2%. </p>

<p>Now imagine for homework, when she says things like, well, if you happened to do so and so pages of Workbook, I will give you extra 50 points(she doesn't tell you to do them, just randomley sees if anyone had initiative to do it). So nobody does. I am thinking, I didn't know about the EC, so I guess I can't do anything about that. WRONG!!!!</p>

<p>100 out of 150 "possible points" = 66.66%</p>

<p>...</p>

<p>so doing the homework perfectly equates to a failing grade. </p>

<p>First I thought that she just made a mistake, so I pointed it out to her very politely. She then told me it made grading easier for her...</p>

<p>So all my classmates did the same... and got the same answer.</p>

<p>So now, here is how it is:</p>

<p>Category Her Grade(%) What it should be(%)
Homework 90.3666 95.777
Quiz 90.46 92.6
Test 96.2 101</p>

<p>Then at the end of the quarter, she drops grades everyone did well on, because obviously cheated/it wasn't hard enough.</p>

<p>I am not a very grade centric person, but it ****es me off when people do this kinda crap. Every other teacher at school said she is just being stupid, but I can't do anything. So I decided to take the B, and not deal with this kinda crap. </p>

<p>Have any of you guys ever had teachers like this? What did you do?</p>

2

<p>If it's a B, it's not worth the trouble. If it is going to seriously affect your graduation or your chances of getting into a given college (C or lower), then talk to the administration at your school. This may be your counselor, a dean, the principal, department chair, whatever. Collect the work you have so you can show that you did it; if you have it noted in a planner or whatever (so you can show that the EC wasn't specifically assigned), so much the better. Not proof, but it's evidence.</p>

<p>Yes, I've dealt with this before. Sucks, but authority figures are occasionally like that, in school and out. If you don't know about the Peter Principle, you should look it up.</p>

3

<p>Yeah, well I already decided it wasn't worth the trouble after first semester. It is pretty cool how much spare time I have. Been working on my ISEF project instead. </p>

<p>Still, it can get discouraging when I see the ship of 1600/4.0's dock here.</p>

4

<p>I am neither. I hear you. But, I have resigned myself to the fact that grades and GPA aren't that important, and aren't entirely under one's control. This is largely due to some extended illnesses I had in high school ... hopefully it'll make grade shock next year @ MIT a bit less horrifying.</p>

5

<p>But see, when you applied, you could say that your illness may have hampered you. However I have no excuse. I am pretty well off, so I can't get away with the whole I didn't have opportunities thing. Oh well... I guess we will see how it goes.</p>

6

<p>Sorry to hear about the teacher... she does sound evil.</p>

7

<p>... or just pretty stupid.</p>

8

<p>
[quote]
Have any of you guys ever had teachers like this?

[/quote]

All thru HS. Your teacher at least does stupid things to the grades, but does correct the papers with sanity.. our teachers cut marks for CORRECT answers! :D (mainly so that students study harder for the final external exams).

[quote]
What did you do?

[/quote]

Nothing. :) Cuz internal grades don't matter.. we have external exams after 10th and 12th grades. The only thing that totally puts me off is that some schools (like IUB) demand transcripts for ALL four years (including internals).. and NO COLLEGE in their right mind would admit anyone from my school (or most others in India) if they even glanced at the internal grades... 34/100 in math, 23/70 in physics... 62/100 in english.. haha..</p>

9

<p>Yeah, but I believe MIT looks at all 4 years grades. I do have the hardest courseload at my school, in my grade. Next year, I am going to an awesome boarding school, so it will be cool.</p>

10

<p>I can't remember if I've had any purposely evil teachers... although I did have one math teacher who claimed to give partial credit, which in his opinion was 1 point out of a possible 10 on a problem that took up a full page to complete and you only spelled the units wrong missed a negative sige or something equally dumb.</p>

<p>I did, however have teachers with absolutely terrible counting abilities lol. One test I got back in a religion class (Catholic school - Church History) had like a 70% on it, and I was just like "no freaking way." Then I recounted the questions she had marked off and found that she has miscounted by over 20. I had like a 95% on it. I pointed it out to her and it got fixed, but I just thought it was funny.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
Yeah, but I believe MIT looks at all 4 years grades.

[/quote]

For most international applications, MIT looks at the available external exam results. If year 12 final results are not available, they look at internal grades... That's what I think.. cuz all of my friends who applied sent only the grade 10 and 12 external reports, and neither MIT nor any other school complained. IUB, on the other hand, did!</p>

<p>
[quote]
...and you only spelled the units wrong missed a negative sige or something equally dumb.

[/quote]

Hmm we had a similar math teacher. He practised this "Hero or Zero" approach.. if you got EVERYTHING right from the top to the bottom, you got full marks, else ZERO. :D It was fun really... encouraged us to be extra careful.</p>

<p>And about the miscalculated marks.. happened all the time with us. I remember this one time, Computer Science test, my teacher gave me a 30 (!). I checked the paper and found he hadn't corrected half the questions.. and he had proclaimed before the test that anyone's 90+ will be upgraded to a 100. So I went to him, sat thru his re-check.. got a 95.. but he refused to promote it to 100... :p said he never claimed any such thing (no one else had 60+ anyway).</p>

12

<p>About the illness thing: I didn't talk about it in my app, as I didn't want to raise the question of whether I would be hindered @ MIT (nope - my doctor thinks it was largely hormonal influences on my immune system). However, looking back, I think it was valuable, as it taught me a lot about my priorities, how to study, and how to learn without much from the teacher. At the time though, obviously it just sucked ;-)</p>

13

<p>heeey Sagar, did you try to suck up to your teacher? something like offering a gum once in a while, saying "good morning" or "have a nice day"... asking a lot of stupid questions? when teacher sees all the rime, it's good! that's how i am making all my grades without even doing the homework :)
oh, how do guys count your GPA? (silly question, but i came in the US not so long ago, and don't know anything about this stuff)</p>

<p>Be nice with your teacher, and the teacher will be nice with you :)</p>

14

<p>No. I tried for a little while, but she doesn't buy it. She doesn't care if you are nice or not. Everyone gets the same treatment.</p>

<p>Oh well. I stopped caring about that class a long time ago, since I realized that I have better things to do that follow that teacher around.</p>

15

<p>GPA: it's on a 0-4 or 1-4 scale usually. Sometimes goes to 5. Assuming you're familiar with A-B-C-D-F grades, each grade is a number, with plusses and minuses occasionally given a value; thus, an A is a 4.0, a B is a 3.0, A+/B- are 3.5, etc. (details vary from school to school). Some schools give different weights to honors vs. non-honors class; mine, for example, gave you an extra .20* your grade if you had an A or B in honors or AP classes.</p>

<p>Take all your #s and average 'em. Now you've got a totally worthless number, having gone to a lot of effort when you could've just eyeballed it. Make sense? No, I don't get it either ;-)</p>

16

<p>woow, woow, woow....this whole thing about A, B, C, D, and F is also kinda unfamiliar to me :)
i don't know about your school, guys, but in mine we have a scale, ranging from 0 to 100 (%)... so, how do you count your GPA then? mine is 98.48 so far...</p>

<p>p.s. sorry this is not about evil teachers ;)</p>

17

<p>Here is how it is at my school:</p>

<p>A = 93-100 = 4.0
B = 85-92 = 3.0
C = 78-85 = 2.0
D = 70-77 = 1.0
F = 0-69 = 0.0</p>

<p>For Honors. add 1 point.
For IB/AP, add 2 points.</p>

<p>So my freshmen year, I got a 4.625.
This year, I will get between 5.0 and 5.125</p>

<p>unfortunately, self studies(I did AP Calc BC this year) don't touch your gpa, so that doesn't help me.</p>

<p>I just hope that my AP scores(which aren't too good) will make up for the french crap.</p>

<p>9th grade:
AP Stats: 4
10th Grade(this year)
AP Calc BC (predict 5)
AP Physics B (predict 4/5)
AP Comp Sci AB (predict 5)</p>

18

<p>Hriundeli, my school does that too. We still have a scale like sagar (92-100= A, 8something-91=B, and so on) but our GPA is calculated just like yours. Mine is like a 95.something, and when we fill out college apps we just plug that number into the designated spot. Most schools will let you check off which grading scale your school uses and/or will have an extra section where you can explain your school's grading system.</p>

<p>There are also some equations you can use to get avague idea of what your GPA would be on a 4.0 scale, but...I never really cared enough to figure it out. I'm sure you can find some methods if you do a Google search. =)</p>

19

<p>Wow... over here we have <40 (12th grade) or <35 (10th grade) as the failing score...</p>

20

<p>I was just wondering how MIT looks at grades. Do they just say, hmm, this guys got good grades, took hard classes, and is a hard worker, so lets give him further consideration. Or are they like person X has Y HighSchool Score, and is ranked 4th in our pool of apps for this category.</p>