Student Final Grade Revision Request

[Bash]

Hi all,

I finished my first teaching semester, it was one semester contract as part time college professor.
As I am new to every step of teaching, I want to ask you about the situation when student asks to revise final grades just 3-4 marks of 100 so they can change from A- to A or (as one said) to get the result that allow to get university admission.
I had few students asking for that and they mentioned how tough was life durting COVID 19 time.
Did you have this situation in you course? What do you think about it?

[downer]

Yes, I have had these requests in the past. The answer is no. Final grades are final.

[Hibush]

This type of request is very common. It is your obligation to assign the grade that they earned, not the one they wish they had earned.

[marshwiggle]

In addition to what others have said, note this:

I had few students asking for that

If word gets out that pleading will get students higher grades, "few" will become "many".

[Parasaurolophus]

I generally round up for students who are at or just a fraction below a letter threshold. But I don't entertain pleading, and once the grades are in, they're in.

[Larimar]

Fellow adjunct here. What I do about "just under the limit for the next letter grade up" grades is this: I sometimes give a small "secret curve" at the end of the semester that I never tell the students about; it just appears at the end of the semester at the very last minute before I submit final grades. I tally everyone's grades as is, then look at how many students are just a few points shy of the next letter grade up. I look at how much of a boost those students would need. I look at their overall class performance: attendance, participation, whether their work improved over the course of the semester, etc. that would make them deserving (or not) of a bit of a boost. From that I determine a small number of points to give them to put the deserving ones over the edge, and I give that number of points to everyone in that class section so that there's no unfairness. Then I submit final grades.

Once final grades are in, that's that, and any pleading emails (I don't get many) I reply to with some version of "sorry, it's no longer in my hands." Chime to everyone advocating holding the line and not giving in to pleading.

Larimar

[Hegemony]

I don't understand — you say you are a college professor, but also that the students wants "to get the result that allow to get university admission. If you are already teaching at a college/university, why does your student want to get university admission?  Or are you in a country where "college" means a pre-university institution of learning? In which case, you would be an instructor or teacher, not (in most countries) a professor.

Regardless, the grade stays the same.

[Caracal]

Yes, this is very common. Just keep the response short and polite. "Dear Student. I understand it can be disappointing to not get the grade you were hoping for and be fairly close, but I can't change grades based on requests. I enjoyed having you in my class this semester. Best,
Caracal

[the_geneticist]

This request from students is very, very common.  What the students don't realize is that a "few points" is actually a lot of coursework.  In my classes, the course is typically out of 400+ points and then turned into a percentage.  So, being "3% short" of a desired grade is the equivalent of missing quite a bit of work.  I also build in some policies that enable a student having a bad week to not ruin their grade (e.g. count the top 10 highest of the 12 quiz scores).

But back to your question.  The answer to the grade revision request is "No.  Final grades are submitted to the registrar and cannot be changed." 

[brixton]

If you change it, then when the students claim grades are subjective, they will be right.  The grade is the grade.

I too wish that cut-offs were different -- for taxes, for loans, for jobs. But alas they are what they are.

[polly_mer]

For the classes where I received many of these requests, I had already built in so much benefit of the doubt with partial credit, redos, and rounding up during the term that anyone still short of the next grade really didn't make it.  As the_geneticist wrote, ending up short at the end of the term indicates missing quite a bit of work during the term.

[Caracal]

If you change it, then when the students claim grades are subjective, they will be right.  The grade is the grade.

I too wish that cut-offs were different -- for taxes, for loans, for jobs. But alas they are what they are.

I mean the truth is that  grades are always a little subjective, which is part of the reason, why, like others, I round up grades that are close. When you get down to very small margins it might matter that I took off a marginal point here or there and so I'd prefer to give the benefit of the doubt to the students. But the line still has to be somewhere. Long ago, I tried to explain to a student  who complained that my grades seemed subjective, that they are, they just aren't capricious. I learned this is one of those things you don't tell students. If you changed grades based on requests, however, your grading actually would be capricious.

[downer]

I'd add that while I still get these kind of requests occasionally, it is pretty rare now. I put that down to being clear about the grading scheme all through the semester and sticking to it consitently. I find it helps to convey the impression to students that this is the kind of thing up with which you will not put.

[arcturus]

I usually receive a few of these each semester I teach GenEd courses. I have many examples of how *not* to try to minimize these requests, including trying to explain to students that sometimes it does hurt to ask since, in essence, these requests imply that the grading scheme I have implemented is subjective and capricious. The one thing that has worked for me is to turn off the automatic grade calculations in the LMS during the last week of the semester. Students can still calculate their percentage-to-date by adding up the individual assignments, but they are not presented with the easy-to-read number of 89.9%, so they are less likely to grade-grub for that missing 0.1%. [I did try the experiment of turning off this feature at the start of the semester, but, like the example I listed above, the negative consequences were far more annoying than simply responding to the end-of-semester-grade-grubbing requests.] This also has the added benefit that the students do not try to pre-calculate how many questions they must answer correctly on the final to pass the class [which they invariably underestimate...].