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Hello!

I'm meeting with a professor tomorrow to discuss my final exam. Does anyone know if a professor can change a grade if he wants to? Or does the curve force him to give out a certain number of As, Bs, etc.? So, even if he wanted to change my grade (due to a mistake for example), he just actually couldn't because of the curve? Or can he actually bump me up if chooses to do so without having to adjust other grades?

Thanks for any input!

Why would he change your grade? Did he make a mistake in calculating the points?

Yeah, for a mistake, just changing a grade in general. Does that screw other students when a professor has to change a grade? If he has to adjust my score, does everyone else's have to adjust as well because he has to strictly adhere to his quotas of As, Bs, Cs, etc?

bru1n wrote:Hello!

I'm meeting with a professor tomorrow to discuss my final exam. Does anyone know if a professor can change a grade if he wants to? Or does the curve force him to give out a certain number of As, Bs, etc.? So, even if he wanted to change my grade (due to a mistake for example), he just actually couldn't because of the curve? Or can he actually bump me up if chooses to do so without having to adjust other grades?

Thanks for any input!

As far as I know the professor has pretty wide latitude in making a grade change. Even if its not a mistake in calculation, but just a change of heart.

However, I can't think of a single person I've spoken to that has successfully gotten a professor to change a grade. I remember going to a professor second semester of my first year, and he pretty much admitted that my paper should have gotten a higher grade, and then he handed it back to me and let me go about my business. I guess because of the curve even a paper that should have gotten a higher grade got a lower one because a lot of people did better than me. In my case though, I didn't directly ask for a grade change so maybe if I had pushed a little harder it would have happened.

I suppose its a school by school situation, but in years of following (even extreme error situations) I cant recall seeing a curved grade actually get changed. One of my friends profs told him he messed up, but even so they would have to call this committee and he would swear it was his fault but it would still be a huge thing and its not a guarantee etc.

Though one should avoid absolutes, I don't think a grade would ever be changed unless there was an actual mechanical miscalculation of points, or like if the grade was mis-entered by the registrar, a pure typo. You are NOT going to get a professor to change a grade by showing up in office hours to review the exam. Do not let yourself think that will happen, you're only going to end up disappointed.

What if you had a scantron exam (all MC), and you erased two answers and marked the right answers on the scantron but the machine misread and marked you wrong, if those marked answers were considered correct and that would move you from an A- to an A, would they change it?

bru1n wrote:Hello!

I'm meeting with a professor tomorrow to discuss my final exam. Does anyone know if a professor can change a grade if he wants to? Or does the curve force him to give out a certain number of As, Bs, etc.? So, even if he wanted to change my grade (due to a mistake for example), he just actually couldn't because of the curve? Or can he actually bump me up if chooses to do so without having to adjust other grades?

Thanks for any input!

Just to pile on:

Professor Mistake along the lines of arithmetic (failed to correctly add points, e.g. wrote 45 by question 1 and 25 by question 2, but only gave you 60 total points instead of 70) or omission in grading (failed to grade entire page(s) or question(s)) -- There's probably a process for that, but it's not an easy one.

Registrar Mistake along the lines of bottom raw score gets A+ and top raw score gets C- with the entire curve reversed between -- There's probably a process for that (and at at least one school last year it's not a pretty one).

Prof Mistake along the lines of "now that you point that out to me I guess you really did spot that issue, even if you didn't do so in so many words," -- There's no process for that. Your grade stands.

DCfilterDC wrote:What if you had a scantron exam (all MC), and you erased two answers and marked the right answers on the scantron but the machine misread and marked you wrong, if those marked answers were considered correct and that would move you from an A- to an A, would they change it?

I think they would argue that its your responsibility to fully erase the wrong answer to put in the right answer and therefore....no grade change.

But, I haven't heard of that situation coming up before, so maybe someone else has experience with that.

bru1n wrote:Hello!

I'm meeting with a professor tomorrow to discuss my final exam. Does anyone know if a professor can change a grade if he wants to? Or does the curve force him to give out a certain number of As, Bs, etc.? So, even if he wanted to change my grade (due to a mistake for example), he just actually couldn't because of the curve? Or can he actually bump me up if chooses to do so without having to adjust other grades?

Thanks for any input!

BUT, ultimately, you have nothing to lose right? The worst that is going to happen is that you'll have to listen to your professor talk at you for 15 minutes as you realize he isn't going to change that grade. Even if that happens, you'll have a chance to connect with a professor and potentially get good feedback.

I think everyone is right to counsel you not to expect much, because I think its very easy to go into that situation on the offensive if you're expecting a grade change and you may end up just making the professor defensive.

And who knows, maybe you beat all the odds and the professor makes it happen. But you're not risking much in just having the meeting and talking through your exam.

I can't imagine a situation where if a professor decided to raise your grade, someone else's grade would have to be lowered because there would be at least 3-5 people who would have their grade lowered and the backlash would be so real. The appeals process would have to apply to all of those students who were on the cusp and now that you got an A-, they ended up with a C+ instead of a B- since everyone's grade had to kinda go down by one. So, I don't think they would have to lower everyone's grade, they would just raise yours.

I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

Also, thanks to everyone for your responses! Appreciate your input

bru1n wrote:

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

I can't believe he would lie to you like that. I mean, I can, because he's a law professor and law professors are the literal worst. But that's awful.

Sorry you had to deal with that OP, that's just not right.

BigZuck wrote:

bru1n wrote:

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

I can't believe he would lie to you like that. I mean, I can, because he's a law professor and law professors are the literal worst. But that's awful.

Sorry you had to deal with that OP, that's just not right.

I mean, I don't think he was necessarily lying, but there just wasn't a strong enough basis to warrant him to change the grade. Oh well! He's a super nice guy - so I don't think he was being evil about it or anything. It is what it is. Thanks for the sympathy though! It does suck though that part hasn't changed haha

BigZuck wrote:

bru1n wrote:

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

I can't believe he would lie to you like that. I mean, I can, because he's a law professor and law professors are the literal worst. But that's awful.

Sorry you had to deal with that OP, that's just not right.

I don't get why you think he's lying? I'm pretty sure there is actually a very high standard for a prof to change a grade after the fact, once they've gone through curve process and so on - at least, that was the case at my school.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

BigZuck wrote:

bru1n wrote:

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

I can't believe he would lie to you like that. I mean, I can, because he's a law professor and law professors are the literal worst. But that's awful.

Sorry you had to deal with that OP, that's just not right.

I don't get why you think he's lying? I'm pretty sure there is actually a very high standard for a prof to change a grade after the fact, once they've gone through curve process and so on - at least, that was the case at my school.

Mine too. Every professor (that isn't an adjunct I believe) needs to agree to the change. Almost never happens.

Good luck. Seems awkward. There's no chance they'd change other people's grades after the fact. If they were going to change your grade then they'd probably just change your grade, and screw the curve. There's no way any school would voluntarily open the can of worms of changing somebody's grade grade a month after the fact.

merlin- wrote:Mine too. Every professor (that isn't an adjunct I believe) needs to agree to the change. Almost never happens.

Wait...what? Although it's rare for a professor to change a grade, I've never heard of a process in which every tenured faculty member must agree to change the student's grade. That doesn't make sense.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

BigZuck wrote:

bru1n wrote:

rcharter1978 wrote:I'm curious, how did your meeting go? If you want to share, for some reason this thread just popped into my mind.

He didn't change it. He said it's a very rigorous process to get a grade changed once it's posted. He wasn't mean about it though!

I can't believe he would lie to you like that. I mean, I can, because he's a law professor and law professors are the literal worst. But that's awful.

Sorry you had to deal with that OP, that's just not right.

I don't get why you think he's lying? I'm pretty sure there is actually a very high standard for a prof to change a grade after the fact, once they've gone through curve process and so on - at least, that was the case at my school.

I just don't believe it's that hard to do. But if that's true, and the administration has set up some insurmountable process for a prof to correct something that he screwed up because of the SANCTITY of the curve then that's even worse. Fire them all. That's just so screwed up, especially when you consider the importance of 1L grades and the fact that the difference between one grade and another can make all the difference in the world.

I know of two profs at my school accidentally just straight up not grading a section of a student's final. Then they give the student a hard time when they just wanted them to grade their damn final. These people get paid extremely well to do like 10 hours of work a week. One of the few responsibilities they have is to properly grade the stupid final. It's not that hard. Mistakes happen, that's fine. But they should bend over backward to fix these types of mistakes.

Fix the grade, screw the curve. Grovel to the dean if you have to. But fix the grade you monsters.

HLS policy fwiw:

"After an instructor has submitted a grade to the Registrar (generally through HELIOS), the instructor may change the grade only if it was incorrect as a result of an arithmetical, administrative, or other mechanical error. A grade may not be changed as a result of a reevaluation of a student’s work except by vote of the faculty. "

http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/academics/h ... e-changes/

I guess I'm just not convinced that "there's a really rigorous process to get a grade changed" means "your grade deserves to be changed (but I can't make it through the process)." Sounds more like "your answer doesn't meet the standard to get a better grade."

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I guess I'm just not convinced that "there's a really rigorous process to get a grade changed" means "your grade deserves to be changed (but I can't make it through the process)." Sounds more like "your answer doesn't meet the standard to get a better grade."

You're giving these people way too much credit in my opinion. There's a reason they grade by checkmarks and/or some proprietary number scale that only they know and that they will take to their grave. These are the type of people who take 6 weeks to grade a scantron test. Most of them aren't going to bother helping out students, especially when it requires effort and for them to acknowledge that they screwed up.

Maybe you're invested in professors not being a net drain on society. Maybe I have had/heard of unusually bad experiences with professors. I don't know, but them screwing up and not fixing it is really terrible in my opinion. And if the administration is making it so that they can't fix their mistakes then the entire law school machine is even more terrible and frightening than I ever imagined.

fozzie wrote:HLS policy fwiw:

"After an instructor has submitted a grade to the Registrar (generally through HELIOS), the instructor may change the grade only if it was incorrect as a result of an arithmetical, administrative, or other mechanical error. A grade may not be changed as a result of a reevaluation of a student’s work except by vote of the faculty. "

http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/academics/h ... e-changes/

That makes more sense to me. Under the HLS policy, if the professor miscounted points—which is the situation I'm aware of in which a law school grade was changed—there's no requirement that the change be approved by a vote of the faculty.

And by the way, the situation Zuck described—straight up not grading a section of a student's final—seems to fall under "arithmetical, administrative, or other mechanical error." It is not "a reevaluation of a student's work" to evaluate a section that was never evaluated in the first place.

Of course if they screw up and don't fix it, that sucks. I don't think we have evidence here that the prof screwed up, is all. I also don't think the procedures are intended to prevent profs from fixing their mistakes, but to prevent them caving to/having to deal with strivers who think they can argue their way to a better grade.

(And FWIW the policy at my school that made it hard to change grades exempted mechanical/arithmetic errors, too.)