^ @roycroft I get a very eclectic mix. I would say as you say, it tends to be the suburban kids, but though more likely public, certainly true of the private schools students at times as well–but I see less of them.
I was a TA in grad school for an undergrad elective class that wasn’t particularly taxing. Any student who put in a modicum of time could’ve mastered the material well enough to get at least a B. Even so I got a fair number of students coming up to me after exams to complain about their grades. The exams were always point-based and it was easy to just add up the points and see what the total was but they’d still insist that they deserved a better grade than they’d earned. One kid got a C and said “I don’t get C’s.” I replied “Things change.”
Well, I found begging with polite and thoughtful email for an extra credit assignment actually working, when you really need that small boost for A and you did work as hard as you could for the semester. Not all professors are that stubborn.
It could mean getting 92 instead of 90 on the final that counts 10% of the grade. If you barely got the 90, then it wouldn’t have been easy at all to get 92 instead.
I can’t imagine my D begging for an increase in grades but…if she was about to lose a $25K merit scholarship because of .2 points, I’d be insisting she at least talk to the professor to see what she could do. Trying to maintain GPAs that exceed 3.5 to keep money that might be desperately needed and might necessitate a student leaving school would be more harmful than good. And yes, that student should have known going into the final that a discussion may be necessary. And no, I don’t believe a professor is obligated to do anything except listen to the argument and then use his/her common sense.
I think one of the things that makes this difficult is that I teach a skill-based course, not a subject-based course. So for many students, their endpoint is very much influenced by the skill-level they entered the course with. You can work really hard at writing and learn a lot, but if your skill level was low at the start, it’s quite possible your writing is at a C level for college writing when you finish. Which is good! You have crossed the threshold of where you need to be to write in college. But I am not going to bump that up to a B no matter how you ask, because that grade denotes a skill level that you just are not at. Yet. The grade has to represent the level of the writing skill the student has achieved.And this is not necessarily tied to the level of high school student came from. I get some really weak writers from socalled good school systems, and some very competent ones from less notable ones.
I have coached my kids about talking to their teachers about their grades. If they got a bad grad on a test, they would go see their teacher before the next test for extra help. They would also ask the teacher if they could do an extra paper or research to bump up their grade a bit, but it would be done before the final grade came out.
Asking your prof “what can I do to improve my grade?” well before the final is very different from “I paid for this course” two days before or worse, after the final grades have come out. The former shows a desire to improve; the latter is all about entitlement.
My favorite was always “But I’m pre-med!”
Yes, and most of us want well-educated doctors who learned their material!
I submitted my grades a few hours ago. I’m glad that I don’t have to deal with complaints. One perk of being the assistant and not the professor 
I am a lenient grader though so honestly, if you didn’t get an A in the class, I have no sympathy.
Favorite comment in an email from a student for the entire year (when told that he could not get credit for late homework, which he should have known from the syllabus anyway): “Your deadlines are meaningless and arbitrary.”
I guess he was practicing for grander appeals about final grades!
@4kids4us my youngest has auditory prodessing deficit.
So I do know what it’s like to have to work harder than others.
Though I suspect that’s not the point behind this thread.
And, issues or not, she has to get the answers right to get the credit. No one here has suggested denying anyone the accommodations to which they’re legally qualified.
The grades I report are directly related to the number of correct answers my students get. The kids who get a 79 could have gotten an 80 by doing a few more homeworks or getting more answers right on a test.
I can’t grade on effort or like ability. My grades are based on correct answers.
I give partial credit based on correct work…my students say I’m very fair when it comes to partial credit. But I can’t grade on effort.
At least you have the STUDENTS asking, not the parents.
@apraxiamom I now make my students (college) come talk to me in person about grades. I have a policy that I absolutely will not discuss grades via email.
When I taught a random course a few years ago, I was communicating about grades with someone that I thought was a student but nope, it was the student’s mother using the student’s uni email to argue a grade.
@romanigypsyeyes wow! How did you know it was not the student?
@oscar63 I didn’t until I mentioned something to the student about not replying to their email. The student was confused. We figured it out from there.
I was mortified. I honestly don’t remember the student’s reaction.
Unbelievable!
As far as asking ahead of time for extra credit, I have to say that I don’t do that. Students have to turn in a major paper a couple weeks before class is over, and a revised portfolio in place of a final.Those together are their opportunity to raise their grade. Those assignments show where they are as writers. Extra writing to “bump” up the grade doesn’t make sense. Their task is to work harder on the already assigned writing–there are a ton of resources to get help with that at the school, including my office hours. But even given that, some students are still at basic competency at by the end, and the grade is going to reflect that, not be raised by extra work. I know I sound tough, but that it’s a rigorous program with explicit standards, because writing is really important, no matter what their major.
^hah! Also I realize that this latest reply had multiple editing issues. Sigh. This is why we write drafts!
We should combine this thread and the ones in the College Life area posted by students complaining about “uncaring” professors and “unfair” grades… would be an interesting meeting of the immovable object and the irresistable force. 
@bjkmom I wasn’t suggesting that a student should be given a grade he/she didn’t earn. I was responding to the notion that “if a student just worked harder…that grade they wanted was attainable.” While that might be the case with someone who didn’t turn in a homework assignment or half-assed one, or could have studied a little more for a test, that’s not necessarily the case, as I’m sure you know, for someone with a LD. It is not “incredibly easy” as someone above said, for some kids to get to that next level.
And yes, I get that that is not the point of the OP’s comments starting this thread. Unfortunately, there are parents out there who make assumptions about kids who aren’t necessarily making “good grades” b/c they assume they just aren’t trying hard enough. I know, b/c I’ve had them make comments to me before because 1) they don’t necessarily know my kid has a LD and 2) as parents of bright, high achieving students, they don’t know what it’s like having a kid with a LD.