<p>I am taking college classes at a junior college. In almost every class I've taken, extra credit (essays, attending school events, and community service) has always been offered and is usually worth half the number of points of a daily assignment. I am wondering if 4-yr institutions offer extra credit like that of cc. It seems that the cc professors just offer a plethora of extra credit opportunities so their students can pass the core classes. I've talked to my older cousin who is attending a 4-yr university and he said that the extra credit his a and p class offered consisted of research papers and that the credit was worth ten percent of a daily assignment. Would anyone else be able to tell me more about extra credit in 4-yr universities?</p>
<p>It depends on your professor. </p>
<p>I’ve only had extra credit opportunity in only three of the classes I’ve taken at my university, and those were just simple clicker questions to make sure people were paying attention and not falling asleep and/or skipping lectures, and those extra credit opportunities were worth only 1-2%. Other than those 3 classes, I’ve never had any extra credit opportunities.</p>
<p>It will obviously depend on the professor. </p>
<p>Generally, since classes are curved (or have a shifted scale), the distinction of being “extra credit” is meaningless and doesn’t really exist. Depending on the grading system and the professor, it could make sense to have extra credit, but it will exist in only a very small minority of classes.</p>
<p>I’ve only had one professor offer extra credit and it wasn’t worth that much anyways (I did it though since I needed the points). But it really does depend on the professor…and what kind of mood he’s in.</p>
<p>Extra credit has not been that common in my experience. Some of my professors have said they don’t have any control over it, that their department has policies against extra credit that they can’t go against. In cases like this, the professor might give you some kind of opportunity that doesn’t involve just “giving” you extra points. For example, they might allow you to write a paper about a class-relevant event you attended and then have that substitute for one of the papers you’ve written for the class. If they are allowed to just give you extra points for something, it will usually be a very negligible amount of points that won’t have a huge impact on your grade. At least in my experience.</p>
<p>One of my music professors has a extra credit current event question on the final because he thinks we should still pay attention to the world around us during finals week.</p>
<p>I’m in a CC, but I’ve only had a couple classes that have offered any kind of extra credit. My humanities professor has offered extra credit for attending campus musical performances/plays/art exhibits etc and writing a 1 page paper about our impressions. </p>
<p>My math professor this semester has given me extra credit on homework assignements a few times for noting the domain/range of functions when the problem didn’t ask for the domain or range. That amounted to getting an 11/10 instead of a 10/10…or something equivalent. My english professor this semester has also given me extra credit on a few things for doing a stellar job on a project. </p>
<p>Aside from my humanities professor this semester though, I’ve never had any college professors actually “offer” extra credit assignments. I’ve heard through the grapevine that a couple of the professors I’ll have next year actually do offer extra credit assignments. So, it really just depends on the professor. </p>
<p>I’m starting calculus in the fall, and I’ve heard from a few people that the calc professor I’m going to have offers extra credit for what he calls “retro problems,” which are older, somewhat less developed calculus problems using different types of notation and things like that. That’s the gist of it anyway.</p>
<p>I’ve had a total of 3 extra credit assignments so far. Two of them were worth 1 homework assignment (i.e. 1% of the grade ;)) and the one I just did is for spare points on the midterm (not sure how many points, but I sure need every point I can get =O). </p>
<p>Another professor decided halfway through the semester to make some assignments optional (yay for democratic classes!), so people who had already done them got a little bump in their grades. That’s a bit less common though…</p>