<p>I took my last final today online, and after all the points were calculated, I realized that my grade for the course is a single point between a B+ and an A-. I have 413/460 points for the course, which is 89.7 percent. One more point would make the total 414/460 and 90%. </p>
<p>It's so frustrating to be just one point away from the next letter grade! Since it really is a difference of one point, I was considering emailing the professor and just asking if he would bump it up. Is this a bad idea? It seems a little invasive to bother him for a point that I technically didn't earn. But at the same time, I worked hard, have shown to be a dedicated student, and emailing might also show I care about the subject and my grade. And I suppose I have nothing to lose by asking. </p>
<p>It's also a little more complicated since it's an online class and I've never met this professor in person (though I have emailed him a couple of times in the past). </p>
<p>So, any thoughts about whether or not I should email my professor about this? If yes, how should I go about it?</p>
<p>No. That is your grade you earned. You keep it and move on.</p>
<p>Nope. I’m with icedragon. You earned a B+, so it’s really not fair to ask for an A.</p>
<p>Considering this is is an online class and you have nothing to lose, I would definitely do it.</p>
<p>I remember a class where I had an 89.4% going into the final. On the final I got an 89.5%. I got a B (my school didn’t do +/-). You get over it in time.</p>
<p>Nope. You got an 80-89.9 which is a B. It wouldn’t hurt to e-mail him, but it’s probably gonna stay a B.</p>
<p>I’m sorry for your loss.</p>
<p>Some professors round up, or will curve the course grades if few students are doing well. If he/she doesn’t do this, then that is the grade you’ve earned.</p>
<p>I would email him because you don’t have anything to lose, so there’s no reason not to.</p>
<p>I would say e-mail him too. The worst he can do is say no, but you’ll never get a peace of mind if you don’t. Truthfully I’d be very angry if I was .3 points away from that A- because it’s a huge difference for such a small point, IMHO!</p>
<p>Do you have anything that could reasonably justify the bump? I’ve had some courses where the professor explicitly stated that he reserved the right to adjust grades up/down by up to 3% for subjective performance (i.e. attendance / participation / office hours). Perhaps the same can apply.</p>
<p>If yes, I think it’s reasonable to ask for it. If not, you earned a B+. The cutoff points need to be set, and there’s always someone who will be in a bad spot.</p>
<p>Remember: grades are earned, not given. In the big picture, it probably won’t matter; B+ is still a good grade.</p>
<p>Yes you should because you have nothing to lose.</p>
<p>E-mail him saying “Hey, I noticed that my final grade is an 89.7%. Is it your policy to round grades?” Many professors simply do this as a matter of course: if your syllabus says a B+ is an 87-89 and an A- is a 90-92, then it’s not really clear what an 89.7% is.</p>
<p>ugh i know how you feel… I got an 89.99 in my class once. no joke, but i didnt get bumped up :(</p>
<p>I decided to bite the bullet and email my professor this morning. This is what I wrote:</p>
<p>"Professor ********, </p>
<p>I am a student in your Abnormal Psychology class (section 050, online) and I had a question about grading. After taking the final yesterday, I looked over all of the points for the course and noticed that I am one raw point away from the next letter grade, with 413/460 and 89.78 percent. I was wondering, is it your policy to round grades up? Since I am a single point away and so close to 90%, is there anything I can do to obtain the next grade? I completely understand if the cutoff is final, but my outcome in this course is important to me, so I thought I would see if it’s a possibility.</p>
<p>Thanks for your time and help.</p>
<p>Regards,
My Name" </p>
<p>I decided it was worth a try. I tried to be straightforward, respectful, and not in any way demanding. He responded a bit ago saying he does round grades within .5 - .9 percent up, so I got the A-. 
But even if I hadn’t, I think emailing would have been worth it. And I don’t believe it’s unfair to respectfully ask when it’s right on the line, at least part of the grading was subjective, and the student has performed well in the class. </p>
<p>Thanks for the opinions and advice everyone.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your successful outcome! </p>
<p>For everyone who said “you have nothing to lose” - that’s not always the case. Some professors get very angry at anything they perceive as grade grubbing (which could include even as polite an email as papertown’s), and if you ever have to deal with them again, it could come back to bite you.</p>
<p>The better approach is to get to know the prof DURING the semester - go to office hours, chat for a short minute after class occasionally, ask good questions in class and be sure to be prepared - so that if your grade ends up on the borderline, they might want to bump it up. </p>
<p>Manipulative? Sure.
Effective? Priceless.</p>
<p>I personally am not a people pleaser, and cannot pretend to like people I dislike. I’m pretty sure I would’ve gotten an A-, and not a B+ in my reaction engineering class had I been friendlier, but I didn’t like him at all. He gave me 3.8/5 for ‘instructor discretion’ (5% of our grade), gave our group a 12/20 in our group project (5% of our grade, even though we did pretty well), and he’s been dodging me because I asked to look at my final exam, which I’m sure he also graded very harshly. I ended up 0.4% away from his A- curve. Call me paranoid, but people like that **** me off.</p>
<p>@stradmom Well the majority of professors won’t do that… so still, you 99.9% of the time have nothing to lose.</p>
<p>Stradmom makes a good point. I could see some professors taking it the wrong way. I think it’s something you kind of need to judge on a case by case basis. I ended up deciding to email my professor because after rereading the syllabus I noticed a note telling students to contact him with any questions about grades, so I figured this applied. </p>
<p>I like the advice about getting to know a professor too. Establishing connections is worthwhile, for situations like this and many other reasons. And most of them are just interesting to talk to.</p>
<p>In one of my major classes I got an 89 so I got a B+. However the funny thing is that she said that she will put a bonus question on the final exam. However while I was taking the exam, she didn’t put the bonus question for some unknown reason. Turns out I got a 100 on the final exam but that still got me a B+. If she had put in the bonus question I would have gotten the chance to get an A-, which is huge for calculating my major gpa. I want to ask the teacher if I could change my grade, but I don’t know how to tell her. Any tips?</p>
<p>I’d heed stradmom’s post; there is wisdom there (as there is in virtually everything she posts in this forum). I know that the grade-grubbers in my department don’t get picked up to do special research work, etc. None of us want to put up with that level of entitlement unless we have to.</p>
<p>(FTR, I would have rated the OPs letter about a 2 on the grade-grubbing scale…unless there were other indicators of immaturity or entitlement, I’d have no problem working with the OP. However, when the grade-grubbing email becomes a pattern, is not phrased as carefully, or is solely a request for a bump for no good reason, I’m less than impressed.)</p>