<p>In high school, it seems rather normal for kids to go up to a teacher and complain about a test or a paper.</p>
<p>How common is grade-grubbing in College? How do professors generally react to such an activity?</p>
<p>A lot of my professors allow for a request of a regrade. I've never felt compelled to try it though. Usually it is more for clear grading errors (not adding up the points correctly).</p>
<p>Tends to be pretty pointless, except for situations like that mentioned above.</p>
<p>The amount of grade grubbing really depends on each person. I knew people that would complain about every grade they got if it wasn't a perfect. Other people never even look at their graded assignments.</p>
<p>I think professors are fine with it as long as you're reasonable about it.</p>
<p>I never saw the point in regrades (which, to me, have always been explained as the professor looking at the answers again to see if they want to give back any points). I mean, is it really only useful at schools where TAs grade tests and things like that? Other than that, how likely is it that a professor is going to look at something he/she has already graded and give it more points than the first time?</p>
<p>i'd only do it if it's clearly their mistake. otherwise, i won't bother.</p>
<p>My son had one professor who was always willing to reread a paper. However, he made it clear that any regrade was final....and that the grade could go up or down. He always requested a clean copy so he would not be swayed by his previous grade.</p>
<p>It might be useful when TAs are used for grading and they don't do a very good job. Otherwise, I'd take a look at Rate</a> Your Students to see how professors think about it.</p>
<p>I don't like the term "grade-grubbing", but when I think something is off, I will go to my profs or TAs. Why not? </p>
<p>I've done this twice so far...</p>
<p>1) Intro Economics. My TA could barely speak english, so I went to see him regarding the "definition" section of our exam. I had a few terms that I had learned straight from the text, and they were marked wrong. They were fixed. </p>
<p>2) Upper-Level Political Science (International Violence). I'm a good student (I mean, most of us on CC are), so it was a shock when I got a C on my short paper this term, which was my worst ever grade on a paper (by over 10 percent!!). It was even more of a shock because I had gone to my professor's office hours prior to writing my paper and discussed my thesis with him. He said it was a good idea and that he was really looking forward to reading the paper. I went to his office hours with my paper and asked him to look over it because I wanted to know what I did wrong. There were maybe three words written on it - not a good indication of why I got the grade I did. He took one look at it and said "oh, I'm sorry, the TA marked this paper and I never read it". It was one of those classes where you don't have a TA in class, but they help with the grading if the professor has a large workload. I gave him my paper to look over and he changed my grade to an A-. </p>
<p>Moral of the story: it is definetly worth going to your professors if you think something is really wrong.</p>
<p>Be careful about it. If it is clear that a mistake was made, by all means, ask about it; however, you don't want to establish yourself as one of "those students." It won't help you in getting recommendations from faculty, etc.</p>
<p>It worked once when I had an A- changed to a A( this was the course grade btw). But it was due to a small error on the professors' part( mistake on my final).</p>
<p>my roommate handed in a spanish activity packet and got it back with a B on the top. she had handed in two previously and had done the same quality work on all and got A-'s on the first two. she went up to the professor who looked at all of them and realized the disparity and changed the grade to an A-. only do it if you really KNOW that something is wrong. </p>
<p>i think its BS that my econ TA gave me 1/5 points for this short answer on my last exam but am i going to go argue for two extra points (because i know i was not completely right)? no, casue in the end it doesnt matter and just makes me look bad to her.</p>
<p>If there's some objective reason the grade is wrong -- such as arithmetic -- feel free to go ask.</p>
<p>If you don't know why you got the grade you did, you can go ask for clarification to help you on future assignments, but I would make it very clear that you are asking for clarification, not challenging the grade. Maybe when going through it with you the instructor will decide you didn't get a fair grade, but if you just show up with "I want a better grade" it's not going to go over well.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>So then i can talk to a prof about a paper if i get a bad grade on it? Like see what I can improve / what i did wrong as long as i'm not out to get a better grade?</p>
<p>Also, is it too much to email a prof if I was going to be, say, absent for class?
(I had this question in mind, but didn't want to make another thred :-/)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, is it too much to email a prof if I was going to be, say, absent for class?
[/quote]
All of my teachers have told us to email them if we will be absent for tests (otherwise it is 20% off), but I've been in pretty small classes so far so it might be different in very large classes. I'd imagine it would be a good thing to do in all classes (you rather be safe than sorry).</p>
<p>Yes, while there is the occasional burned out, frustrated professor, most of the time they'll talk to you about why you got a specific grade and how you can improve your performance. If you know who graded your paper and it wasn't the prof (TAs do a lot of grading in big lecture classes), I'd go talk to that person. Just make sure you've read any comments they've written on the paper already, and stress up front that you're <em>not</em> asking for a better grade (they will often assume that's why you're there because most of the people who show up to talk about something that has been graded and handed back want a better grade) but rather for help performing better in the future.</p>
<p>I TAd for awhile in introductory philosophy classes that satisfied distribution requirements, and there were a couple of students in each of those classes who had gotten As on papers up until then by basically recounting and explaining facts ("Descartes' methodological skepticism is ...") but got (what were for them) low grades on their first papers or essay tests because they had little experience with critical evaluation and hadn't included any. (Yeah, we did stress that up front, but it was a complete change for some students and I don't think they really absorbed it.) Some of those students got frustrated and stopped taking the class seriously. Others would show up in office hours to talk about what they needed to do to get an A on future assignments in this particular class, and there would be a huge improvement by the second written assignment. Those were some of the most rewarding students to teach -- and everyone on the teaching team agreed about that -- because they cared about learning. (Okay, some of them may have only cared about grades, but they saw learning as the way to get good grades and that was good enough.)</p>
<p>People who show up and say "I don't think this grade reflected the amount of time I spent on this paper. It took me 2 hours!" or "I'm an A student. All my other teachers always gave me As. Obviously you're grading too hard" or "I need at least an A- in this class or I'm going to lose my financial aid/my parents are going to be very upset/I won't have a good enough GPA for grad school" or (this is the one I most loathe) "My tuition pays your salary! I'm not paying for a B+!" are an entirely different matter. And there are more of them than you would think, especially if you're not friends with people like that.</p>
<p>As far as emailing to say you're going to be absent, it's the same thing. In large classes they probably won't notice unless you're already someone they know (because you're an awesome student, because you're disruptive, because they think you plagiarized your first paper, because on the first day you tripped and spilled Mountain Dew all over the stack of syllabi, etc.), but in smaller classes it's polite because they will notice. It will also give you a chance to make it clear that you're not blowing off their class because you'd rather sit outside and discuss "Veronica Mars" or because you're hung over from a party the night before, but rather have a good reason (which you can briefly state -- they don't need an attached video of you throwing up or anything).</p>
<p>But you'll want to make it clear that (a) you are not expecting them to give you notes or repeat the lecture to you in office hours (they'll expect you to get the notes from a classmate -- you're responsible for the material whether you're there or not (yes, I've had a student argue that the final was unfair because she'd missed most of November and December and in high school nobody expected her to know stuff that was discussed on days when she wasn't there), (b) you understand that the attendance and participation policies applies to you even if you tell them you won't be there (if it's something like being in the emergency room because you were hit by a car that morning and you really do think you should be excused you can ask if they need documentation and what documentation they need), and (c) you aren't making a habit of it.</p>
<p>When I am in class as a student, I do my work. I show up prepared. I show up on time. With the exception of one class in my first semester, I show up every day. I don't cheat. I don't try to manipulate or bully the prof into doing something I haven't earned. And most of the people with whom I have anything in common are the same way. So it doesn't seem to me as if there's much of that happening at all. But when I'm part of the teaching team, the people who lie, cheat, disrupt class, and make ridiculous demands are the ones who take up most of my outside-of-class time, and it starts to seem as if all students are like that. Or at least all students who are going to talk to me. I know it's not true, but I also know that I start cringing when a student approaches. That's not fair, but I think it's a fairly understandable response. When I was just starting out, and only had experience as a student, I got a lot of reactions that I thought were just weird. I understand those reactions now, and I try to head them off by making it clear that I'm there for an education, not for a charity grade.</p>
<p>Wow, that got long. I hope it's useful to you, though.</p>
<p>If there is an actual clear mistake in the grading (e.g. they added up the points wrong and gave you the wrong total or it's a multiple choice question and you had the right answer) then there's nothing wrong with seeking a correction. I wouldn't call that "grade-grubbing" per say. </p>
<p>True "grade-grubbing" though (e.g. whining and complaining over ever little point that gets taken off) is very much frowned upon. Remember, if you ask for a re-grade they could be just as likely to take MORE points off than give you some back. </p>
<p>If there's been an actual mistake then say something, but otherwise focus energy on learning from the mistake and not whining over a few lost points.</p>
<p>I've seen it happen before. Specificly one student in our class(we had a small class) who always did something of the sort. He argued with the professor about how his answer is at least partially correct and he should get more points etc from what I saw. He got points lots of times. But it should also be noted that everyone hated the kid and there was even a facebook club made that was just for people to join together so the world would know he was hated. </p>
<p>I personally never did any grade grubbing, although one semester I think I should have to have made the Dean's list at the end of the semester(one of my classes was highly subjective to opinion for scores, so I coulda grubbed around there, also another class I only screwed up one assignment but aced everything else, and another class I coulda poked around old exams and scrounged up a point or two to try to take myself up to an A).</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've seen it happen before. Specificly one student in our class(we had a small class) who always did something of the sort. He argued with the professor about how his answer is at least partially correct and he should get more points etc from what I saw. He got points lots of times.
[/quote]
I have some people in my classes that do that and it gets so annoying. *NOTE TO EVERYONE: * DO NOT BE THAT KID!</p>
<p>I really hate it when people try to argue about the grading of an essay--uh hello of course you think it is perfect or you wouldn't have turned it in!</p>
<p>Don't grade-grub in college unless circumstances are ridiculous! It's actually pretty annoying. The ONLY time I have ever asked for a second look at an assignment was when a TA took off a whole bunch of points on a problem set because it was in pencil and got smeared when it was in the stack with other problem sets. That was kind of ridiculous, so I went to the prof and got the (significant number of) points back.</p>
<p>I had a friend whose TA forgot to grade an entire problem on her test, and she realized this when she looked through the exam which was marked with a nice big C-. After she pointed out the mistake, she got a B+. Yeah. Lollll</p>
<p>So, if it's only a few points or there's no real absurd reason to ask for a regrade, don't do it. It's ok if it's a lot of points and/or you genuinely think that a professor/TA made a mistake.</p>