<p>I feel like I received a grade lower than I should have in Physics 2207. What is the process for appealing grades?</p>
<p>Should I contact my discussion TA or professor first? What should I write in the e-mail? Generally, how successful are these?</p>
<p>I think for an overall grade question, you’d probably better just send an email straight to the professor. you’re not supposed to to talk about specific grades over email because of privacy laws, but you could mention which assignments lead to believe your grade is too low. I have never done this and I cannot speak to success rates.</p>
<p>Simply send an email to the professor asking (nicely) for an explanation. The most common reason students end up with poorer grades than they expect is that they overestimate how well they did on the final exam. Very occasionally there is some kind of calculation error, though that’s uncommon nowadays because most faculty use computer programs that do the math automatically.</p>
<p>^I agree, calculation errors are probably quite rare…and I’d like to think that the only way a professor would change someone’s grade is if there was some type of error in calculating the final grade. Any other reason would probably be pretty unfair to the rest of the class. ;)</p>
<p>final grade calculations are not the only place where things could go wrong. I once had a prelim (in a big science lecture) where the points were added up completely wrong, enough that it would have definitely affected my final grade for the worse. if that had happened on the final, I would have only noticed it indirectly through an unexpected final grade, so I think it’s worth it just to check.</p>
<p>^I see. I guess my point is, don’t expect a grade change if it wasn’t an error on the professor’s/TA’s part because that would be unfair to everyone else in the class. 
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<p>I graduated this semester and I have never had to contact a professor about my final grade–I think most professors are careful when it comes to these sort of things. It definitely can’t hurt to ask though!</p>
<p>calculations get messed up all the time. my grade in a class jumped from a B+ to an A after I discovered a minor counting error.</p>
<p>i almost had a heart attack when i saw C- in one class. I emailed my professor and she had forgot to add in one of my prelims that I got a 95 on. Turns out I got an A in the class</p>
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<p>I guess I should just consider myself luck then.</p>